by Carol Coffey
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
Mendoza wiped her eyes. “For getting over the fact that I wasn’t a man,” she joked.
“You’re going to have to cut down on the whinging though if you’re to work under me,” he said.
“See you in Richmond.”
Locklear watched as she left the station and started up her busted-up car. He listened as it noisily made its way out of the lot and onto the highway which would lead her to Richmond. To home.
He took one final look around and slipped quietly out the station door. Only Carter saw him exit but said nothing. He knew the man well enough by now to know that this was the way he lived his life. Alone, aloof and in the shadows.
Locklear took one last drive around the town before starting out on the long drive to Wallens Ridge maximum security prison. Tomorrow he would see Beth Stoll and keep the promise he had made to her grandfather. He drove past the Baptist church which Carter would no doubt miss and the diner where he would miss Marilyn Monroe who he had become quite fond of. He swung a left and glanced briefly at Jack’s Hideaway bar where he had almost succumbed to his disease, to his desire to quell his emotions.
Before he headed out onto the highway for the four-hour journey, he drove by Lombardi’s car yard. Nicky Junior was washing cars in the lot and singing along to rap music blaring from the lot’s speakers. Locklear slowed and pulled up at the kerb.
He grinned as Nicky threw the hose down to give him the finger and was about to pull away when the kid’s expression changed slowly. Nicky Lombardi raised his hand and waved – an acknowledgement to the man who brought his father into his life. Locklear turned the key as Nick Lombardi Senior came to the entrance and raised his hands up. He could see the trademark cigar in the reformed criminal’s left hand.
“Stop!” he shouted.
Locklear took his foot off the gas but kept the motor running.
“What?”
Nick came up to the car. “I just wanted to say thank you. What you did, I just wanted to say thanks ... thanks for bringing my boy to me. I thought I was alone now. I didn’t even know he existed ... not until you did what you did for me.”
Locklear stared straight ahead. He didn’t know what to say to a man like Lombardi.
“I’m sorry for what I did ... I’m sorry I …”
Locklear swung his head around.
“Don’t say any more, Lombardi. Don’t utter one more goddamn word.”
A confession, even after all of this time, would have to be reported and Lombardi needed to be around to look after the kid.
“You knew it was me. What I never figured out was why you didn’t rat me out. You could still turn me in.”
Locklear wanted to tell the crook that it was because he was determined that he didn’t go down for shooting him but would face trial for the manslaughter of so many others – vulnerable addicts whose lives he turned into a never-ending nightmare. He wanted this for the families whose lives would never be the same again, for the children left behind, the husbands, mothers, everyone. And to achieve that, he had needed Lombardi on the streets. But Locklear knew that there was another reason and that reason was Rosa.
“I did it for your wife. As lousy a husband as you were, she needed you. Anyway, I had no proof. I didn’t get a good enough look at you. I was busy dying.”
Lombardi stood back and took a deep pull on his cigar.
“You always liked my Rosa.”
Locklear didn’t answer. He had always been a sucker for pent-up, repressed women, especially beautiful ones.
“Anyway, I wanted to get a chance to tell you – you never owed me nothing yet you did something like this for me. Never knew people could be that way.”
“Shut up, Lombardi, and just get on with your life.”
Lombardi smiled. “Thank you.”
Locklear pulled slowly from the kerb and headed out on the highway as the sun set in the sky. As he drove southwest on Route 81 he watched the sun as it lowered on the horizon. Purple and pink hues danced across the magnificent sky and as he drove westward would slowly turn to midnight blue before a new day dawned across the beautiful Virginian land.
Chapter 33
At eleven the following morning Locklear was already sitting in the visitor’s section of Wallens Ridge prison with Lennox for their pre-arranged meeting with Beth Stoll. In the reception area, Lennox pointed to a familiar man with weary eyes sitting in the corner of a waiting area. Eric Stoll, dressed in traditional Mennonite clothes, had lost weight since Locklear had last seen him.
“He’s been sleeping in his car outside of the compound grounds. Security have tried to move him on but he won’t go. He comes inside every day hoping to see his sister but she refuses to see him.”
Locklear passed the newly appointed pastor who, deep in thought or prayer, did not look up at the policemen.
Before they entered the area where they would meet with Stoll, Lennox put his arm forward, blocking Locklear’s path.
“There’s something you should know. She’s appealing her incarceration on the grounds of insanity.”
Locklear exhaled loudly. Stoll certainly was insane but he did not doubt that she fully understood that her actions were wrong and he believed that she had the capacity to face trial.
“Well, let’s hope a jury see through it.”
Locklear and Lennox chose the middle partition of the meeting room which at this time of the morning held no other visitors. A glass panel divided the cops from prisoners and armed guards stood on both sides of the dividing panel. Ten minutes passed before the door opened and Stoll, dressed in a prison-issue orange jumpsuit, shuffled in with a guard who had NIELSEN embroidered onto her uniform. Her legs were chained as were her hands. Her hair hung loose and appeared dirty but her face appeared as defiant, as sneering, as angry, as it did on every occasion Locklear had seen the woman. The guard pushed her hand down roughly on Stoll’s shoulder and shoved her onto the waiting chair. She cried out in pain.
“Are they giving you pain medication?” he asked.
He had not intended to begin his interview with the evil woman in this way although how exactly he intended to conduct the meeting he did not know.
“That’s what you came all this way for? To see if I’m getting enough aspirin?”
“We had to stop giving the medication to her, sir,” Nielsen said. “She was collecting morphine pills and sleeping pills and when we insisted on supervising her swallowing them in front of us, she wouldn’t take them. We were worried she’d try commit suicide.”
Locklear smiled. The concern he had felt only moments before for the woman vanished in a second. Beth Stoll was still calculating, still scheming.
“Oh, Beth won’t commit suicide. She loves herself too much for that. But what she will do is try to drug someone with them to assist in escape.”
Nielsen smiled. “She’d need to be Houdini to get out of those chains.”
“Well, you just make sure they stay on,” Locklear replied.
Stoll glared at him.
Locklear lifted the box towards the window. Stoll’s face remained impassive. Stone-like.
“I promised your grandfather I’d give this to you.”
Stoll did not speak.
“Do you want it?”
Stoll’s lips parted briefly. She licked her lips. Catlike.
She raised her hands up to the glass and touched its grimy surface.
She turned to look at Nielsen. “Can I have it, please?”
Nielsen looked to the armed guard standing on Locklear’s side of the partition. He came forward and searched the box. Without speaking he emptied the dirt onto a table and searched to ensure the box was empty. He piled the dirt back in. He nodded to Nielsen.
A door at the end of the partition opened and the box was placed inside.
The armed guard on the opposite side rechecked Stoll’s handcuffs which allowed for no movement. Locklear knew what the guard was
doing. He was ensuring that Stoll would be unable to pick up the box to use it as a weapon.
“It’s clear.”
Nielsen pulled Stoll from the seat and rechecked her cuffs. The staff at Wallens Ridge were taking no chances with Stoll.
“Clear.”
Stoll sat down and waited while the silver box was placed in front of her. Neilsen stood back. Locklear and Lennox watched from the other side of the partition. Stoll looked up and for a moment she did not move. She ignored Lennox and fixed her stunning eyes on Locklear.
“Look away,” she ordered.
“Not a chance,” Locklear replied.
“I’m entitled to privacy,” Stoll growled.
Neilsen took one step forward. Stoll tensed.
“You lost all privileges the day you came here,” Nielsen said. “Now, you either open that box or you go back to your cell right now. I’m sure Mary will be glad to see you back so soon.”
Locklear looked at Lennox.
“The prison is overcrowded. She’s been put in the same cell as Mary Gunderson.”
Locklear tried to remember where he had heard that name before. His mind raced as Stoll continued her standoff. Then he remembered. Gunderson was the woman whose husband committed suicide after their daughter had been raped and murdered by the man Stoll defended and she was serving life for shooting the rapist in court. Jeb Carter had told him that Mary Gunderson had learnt fast about life in the maximum-security prison and had become as violent as the other inmates in the years she had been here.
Locklear understood Stoll’s urgent need to be declared insane. She wasn’t going to last the week.
Stoll reached forward and opened the upper section of the box slowly.
“It’s empty but there’s a section below,” Locklear offered.
Lennox, thinking Locklear had gone soft, looked at the sergeant.
Locklear knew what he was doing. He wanted to see Stoll’s face when she realised the lower chamber of the box was also empty.
Stoll held the lid upwards to block the cop’s view of the box.
“Did you look in it?” she asked.
“Funny, your grandfather asked me the same question.”
Stoll knew she was not going to get an answer. She looked behind to Neilsen.
“Don’t think you’re taking that to your cell,” Neilsen said. “It’ll be held for you until your rel ... it’ll be passed on to your next of kin.”
Neilsen had been about to say ‘until your release’ but stopped herself in time. Everyone there, everyone except perhaps Stoll, knew she was never getting out of there alive.
She held the lid up as high as she could and rummaged around the base of the box. Locklear watched as the frantic woman began to push the base. When nothing moved, she began to pull, grip, tear.
“Are you looking for something, Beth?” he asked.
Stoll slammed the lid shut and stared at Locklear. Hot, angry tears welled in her eyes.
“It’s empty, Beth. We got everything – the coins – they’re worthless by the way but you already knew that. It was the jewellery you were after. We had someone value it. Turns out some of those gems are very valuable. You would have got enough money to start a new life anywhere you wanted. If you had gotten away with it.”
Stoll tried to lift the box, presumably to throw it at the glass panel protecting Locklear. Nielsen moved forward and in one swoop lifted the box and pushed Stoll’s head onto the table. She squirmed and tried to push back. The armed guard made ready. Stoll could see him on the periphery. She relaxed and did not move until Nielsen moved back. Neilsen moved to give the box to the armed guard at the end of the room who would put it in storage for the woman until her fate was decided.
“Don’t bother. I don’t want it,” she said.
Locklear stood. “Your grandfather asked me to ensure you got the box.”
Stoll curled up her lips and sneered at him. “So that I could use what he knew was inside to get away. I was never interested in a piece of dirt from the old country and neither was he. You should give it to my brother. It’s the kind of thing he would cherish.”
“If you survive this place, Stoll, and I doubt you will, you might get out in about fifty years. I’ll be long dead by then and you’ll be an old woman. It’s 2016 now and that box has been in your family for three hundred years and was missing for the last one hundred and fifty of those. Your ancestors had to leave their homeland because they were persecuted for their beliefs. They carried anything of value they could sell in that box so they could start a new life in America, to give you the life you have today. A life that you threw away.”
Locklear stopped talking to see if his words had any impact on the woman. They didn’t.
“But you were only interested in what was inside it, what good it could do you. I feel sorry for you, Beth. I really do.”
Stoll looked at Neilsen and stood slowly.
“Take me back.”
Neilsen pulled the woman backwards and twisted her until she faced the door.
“Stoll?”
She turned her head to take one last look at Locklear.
“It’s a good year to put things right.”
The door buzzed open and Stoll disappeared from view.
Locklear waited until the armed guard retrieved the box and gave it back to him.
In the reception area he approached Eric Stoll and sat down beside him.
“Eric?”
Eric Stoll looked up. Locklear could see the utter grief, the despair, the hopelessness etched on the kind man’s face. Locklear held the box and placed it into Eric’s hands. He opened his pocket and lifted the letter written by Eli Shank’s mother and placed it on top of the box.
“This is the box that caused the rift between you and the Fehr family. It was carried by your ancestor Jan Shank in 1711 as he left to come to America. You and your daughters are the last of the family now. I hope you treasure it.”
“My sister!” he wept.
“Your sister is gone, Eric. The woman behind these walls is not her. I think it’s best you remember her as the little girl she was. You can’t help her.”
“I can pray for her.”
“Yes, you can but that’s all you can do. Go home, Pastor. Go home to your family and try to build a bridge over the rift in your community. Forgive the Fehrs. They were innocent victims just like Beth once was.”
Eric nodded but did not move. Locklear left the pastor sitting there, staring at the box, wondering what might have been and what would happen now.
He left the prison and made his way to his car. It was still only 1pm and there was one last thing he needed to do before he travelled that last piece of road to Richmond.
Chapter 34
The entrance to the Fehr farm in Dayton somehow looked different to Locklear as he approached the holding from the south. The summer was almost over and the sun was already setting in the red sky as he parked his car and walked towards the barn. The house, he noticed, no longer looked abandoned. The screen door had been repaired and no longer emitted the banshee-like screech which had unnerved Mendoza in the first days of the extraordinary investigation. The front door, which had been absent, was replaced and the wood porch looked freshly swept and scrubbed. The windows, once dusty and neglected, were freshly washed and gleamed in the light of the setting sun. A warm wind blew around the yard and seemed to whisper to Locklear. A breath of hope, of fresh possibilities, a new future.
He pushed on and glanced briefly down the valley to the home the Wysses had tried hard to defend. Their farm now belonged to Luke Fehr and he hoped that the man would finally be able to live the life he had wanted and had executed a long hard battle to protect. Locklear inhaled the fresh warm air and knew this would be the last time he would stand on this soil. He loved these places, the open air, the sun, the green. It spoke to his heart in a way cities never could. He knelt down and rubbed the dry, lifeless earth between his fingers just as he had done on the first day the
investigation began. The eyes which had followed him as soon as he set foot on the farm were behind him now, stunning grey eyes speckled with the last rays of sun, of hope, that there could be better times. Locklear did not move.
“You always knew there was no curse on this farm, didn’t you? That’s why you read all those books on geology, books you shared with Andrew. You realised that the dry soil and absent grass was due to natural causes. Didn’t you?”
“Yes,” a voice responded.
Locklear tried not to react. He gently returned the soil to the ground. He stood to his full height but did not turn around.
“And the night your brother was strung up here. You were here, waiting. You knew it was going to happen. I guess Plett told you or perhaps it was you who told him. One way or the other, you were both here to save him and you did.”
Locklear received no answer but could hear footsteps moving closer.
Locklear pointed to his left but kept his back to the man.
“And that outhouse there – that’s the one Sara locked you in the morning you were going to hang yourself. You still believed in the pact then but you were only twenty-one years old. I guess you’ve learnt a lot since then. I guess you began to see through it the day Maria Whieler gave you her mother’s journal and when the Ropps and the Yoders disappeared. You knew then that this was nothing but a farce, that greed and not honour was at the centre of the pact.”
