by Thomas Scott
“You’re not going to find anything,” Murton said. “There’s nothing there. There never was. I’m not the man you think I am, Jonesy.”
“Murt, what the hell is going on? That was you in the cab, wasn’t it? If you’re not part of this, come in and we’ll—“
He laughed without humor. “We’ll what, figure everything out? Get me a lawyer? I don’t think so, pal. We were going to be married, did you know that? Did she tell you that?
“Murt…”
“I left to protect her, Jonesy. I told them she didn’t know anything, that she was just a minister working with pre-school children. She was pregnant. We found out about a week ago. She died thinking I left her because she was pregnant. Jesus, what have I done?”
Virgil picked up the phone from the kitchen and dialed 911. “Murt, I’m sorry. Let me help you.” He could hear the 911 operator in the background asking if someone needed assistance.
“You know, I always sort of had it in my head that you and I might hook back up one day, but I guess that ship has sailed. That’s not on you, though. Hey, what’s that we used to say? Pop ‘em and drop ‘em? That’s exactly what I’m going to do. Tell your old man he’s the best, will you? And don’t bother trying to get a trace on this phone. It’s one of those pre-paid specials. It’s about to be road kill on the interstate. What a country, huh?”
Sandy came around the corner just as Murton broke the connection. “What’s going on?” she said.
“I wish I knew.”
20
__________
Monday morning when Virgil arrived at his office he discovered Amanda Pate sitting in one of the two chairs that front his desk. “Your assistant said I could wait in here.”
“What do you want, Amanda?”
“What do I want? For God’s sake, Jonesy, I want my husband released from that rat hole you’ve put him in. He’s been in there all weekend. What were you thinking?”
Virgil looked at his watch. “Arraignment is in two hours. He can bond out afterwards.”
“Bond out? Have you lost your mind? I want the charges against him dropped and I want him released this instant.”
“That’s not going to happened, Amanda. It’s time to get a grip on reality, here. Samuel is being held for assault on a police officer.”
“Oh, bullshit, Jonesy. That is pure and utter bullshit, and you know it. You’re holding him because you think he’s somehow mixed up in Franklin’s death, and that just isn’t true. God, you piss me off.”
“If it’s not true, then convince him to talk to me so I can clear him and move on, otherwise, he’s our number one suspect.”
“Our attorney has advised us—”
Virgil waved her off. “Yes, yes, your attorney has advised you not to speak with the police or answer any of our questions. That’s what attorneys do, Amanda. But the hard reality of the situation is this: The truth eventually comes out, and when it does, it’s one of two ways. Either a suspect talks to us and we clear their story, or we move forward with charges and the whole thing goes to trial. Which would you prefer?”
She rose from the chair, her face and neck red with anger. “You’re wrong,” she said. “Those aren’t the only two choices.”
“I’m afraid that’s the way I see it, Amanda. If you or Samuel change your mind and want to get on the record, let me know. Otherwise, we will be moving forward on the case with the evidence we’ve accumulated from both your home and your offices.”
“What evidence? There is no evidence.”
“We’re building our case, Amanda. I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you. If I were you, I’d advise Samuel that it’s time to get in front of this thing before it’s too late. Capital murder in the State of Indiana carries the death penalty. With a full confession, the D.A. might be willing to accept a plea deal of life without the possibility of parole, but I may be speaking out of turn here. I can check with him if you’d like.”
She pointed her finger at him, the fear and rage evident when she spoke. “Fuck you, Jonesy. Fuck you times two, you son of a bitch.”
“Good bye, Amanda. Next time you want to speak with me, make an appointment.”
A few minutes later, when he looked out his office window at the street below, Virgil saw Amanda as she crossed the street toward the courthouse. The morning traffic was heavy and when she walked out into the street and stopped halfway across, she forced the vehicles around her to swerve or stop completely. She turned and looked up at Virgil in the window and shook her head, staring at him until he moved away.
Fuck her, Virgil thought.
__________
An hour or so later Virgil was still at his desk when Agent Gibson knocked on the doorjamb and walked into his office. He sat down without being asked, bit into the bottom corner of his lip then raised his eyebrows at Virgil. “So maybe we got off on the wrong foot.”
“Heard you tried to brace the governor. How’d that work out for you?”
“Hey, I’m trying here. You want my help, or not?”
Good question, Virgil thought. “What exactly do you want, Agent Gibson?”
“Bottom line? I want you to drop the charges against Pate. His arraignment is less than an hour from now.”
“You asked me if I wanted your help. How exactly does my dropping charges against Pate help me?”
“Look, Detective. You’ve managed to drop a turd in the punch bowl and now I’m the one who has to clean it up. We’ve been monitoring Pate’s activities for months trying to put our case together. If I can be blunt, you’re getting in the way. This assault charge you’ve got hanging over him is going to hurt our chances and while you’re doing that, I have to wonder, Detective, is it helping your case at all? Is it putting you any closer to solving the murders you’re working on?”
“Nice speech, but you still haven’t answered my question.”
“How sure are you of Pate’s involvement in Dugan’s death?”
“He’s our primary suspect.”
“Based on what?”
When Virgil didn’t answer, Gibson went on. “Okay, here it is. I work out of the Houston office, but I guess you know that. It’s the Texas Department of Insurance that’s under investigation by our office for fraud, not Pate. Pate torched his church in Houston and when the company who underwrote his policy started making waves about writing the check, the Texas DOI got involved and Pate walked away with a wad of cash before the building had stopped smoldering.”
“So what?” Virgil said. “File charges on the Commissioner of the Texas DOI.”
“We did. But his lawyer cut a hell of a deal and now the commissioner is part of witness protection.”
“Witness protection? What for?”
Gibson half laughed at the questions. “You Midwestern guys are something, you know that?
“What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
“Let me put it this way,” he said. “You think the Catholic priests are the only ones tweaking the twangers on little boys?”
“How about you take the corn dog out of your mouth and tell me the whole story?”
“Hey, great choice of words. When we took the commissioner down for fraud we discovered his personal computer was full of pictures of little kids with no clothes on. He cut a deal and put us onto Pate, who the commissioner says was supplying the photos. Our analysts compared the background of the photos to ones we could find of Pate’s church before he torched it. We think they match up. In any event, the Commissioner says Pate blackmailed him and had him lean on the insurance company to write the check or he’d start to squeal about the photos.”
“You’re saying Samuel Pate is a pedophile?”
“You tell me,” Gibson said. “I read your report on that dilapidated church he bought for five million bucks. What was he going to do with it? Knock it down and build a learning center for pre-school kids or something like that? But let me guess, when you searched the Pate complex and his home you didn’t find one scrap of evidenc
e that ties him to your case or mine. And in the meantime, that old broken down building, the one that wasn’t included in your search warrant burns to a crisp along with any evidence that may or may not have been material to your case, let alone mine.” He stood from his chair and turned to leave. “Someone is leading you around by your nose, Detective. Take the corn dog out of my mouth. I love it.”
__________
Virgil walked over to Cora’s office to fill her in on the conversations with Amanda Pate and Agent Gibson. She sat quietly and listened, but when he got to the part of Pate’s alleged involvement as a pedophile, her expression looked like that of a passenger staring out the window of an airliner at thirty thousand feet as they watched the rivets pop one at a time from the wing of a plane.
“What is it?”
“So you’re saying we’ve got a suspected murderer and pedophile in custody and Gibson wants us to let him skate?”
“He’s going to get out anyway,” Virgil said. “Besides, I think Gibson may be right. Someone is pulling our strings behind the curtain. I just don’t know who it is, or why. But I don’t think it has anything to do with Pate.”
Cora looked at him for a moment, then said something that made Virgil think they were having two different conversations. “Is there something you’d like to tell me regarding the nature of your relationship with Detective Small?”
When he did not answer her right away, she said, “I see. What about Wheeler? What did Gibson tell you about him? You did ask, didn’t you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Your personal life is interfering with your job, Jonesy. Clean it up.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying, Cora.”
“I think you do,” she said, then stared at the paperwork on her desk until Virgil got up and walked out.
__________
The conversation with Cora left Virgil confused and angry. He ate lunch by himself in a small diner near his office and by the time he was finished, he had concluded that Cora was probably right. He was romantically involved with a co-worker, and his lifelong friend, Murton Wheeler, was somehow connected—at least on the periphery—with a serial murder investigation, and as the chief investigative officer of the State of Indiana he’d put no more effort into his apprehension than he would a Sunday jaywalker late for morning Mass. Virgil finished his sandwich, paid the tab, and got ready to leave when something occurred to him. Gibson was right. Somebody was pulling his strings and Virgil realized he’d been in possession of a large part of the answer all along. Maybe not the entire answer, but a pretty damn big piece. And more importantly, he knew what he had to do next.
He walked out to his truck and just as he reached the driver’s door he heard the footsteps coming hard from behind. Virgil turned in time to see a club being swung at his head and he tried to bring his right arm up to block the blow, but the attacker made just enough contact to knock him off balance and he fell face first into the pavement. Before he could move or get up he was hit again, this time in the back of the head, and that’s the last thing Virgil remembered until he woke some time later, a thick blindfold across his eyes, his body bound with rope across a vertical steel support structure with his arms out from his sides and tied to a cross member as if he were being crucified.
He tried to pull free, but knew it was pointless. He had virtually no feeling left in his arms or legs, and no idea how long he’d been unconscious and tied up.
Virgil let his head hang down, his chin against his chest. Heard himself whisper Sandy’s name.
21
__________
Often, with little care or attention, a seedling of a wish will take root and grow across a windswept garden of unspoken dreams. It will set ever deeper into the mind, its root structure wide and strong over the darkness of the psyche where it dares to exist as a hushed and secret desire. The subconscious will nurture this desire and feed it until it grows from a seedling of desire into a stalk of hope. And when that happens, a flower of dark faith is born, its root base entrenched deep into the hardpan of who we are where a dry and unfed hunger is concealed from the killing frost of conscious thought.
Brian Goodwell lived in the light of such darkness, his mind forced to conjure the images from his faded memories. Were it not for his hearing, his sense of smell, his ability to taste, or touch, Brian Goodwell thought he might go mad. Wondered sometimes if he hadn’t already and no one had ever bothered to tell him.
Brian shared his life and his love with his wife Tess whom he had not seen in over eleven years. They had been married for only a year and a half when the doctor discovered Brian suffered from Retinoblastoma, a cancer of the retina. Both eyes were affected. When Tess came home from work that night Brian followed her around the house, trying to memorize every curve of her body, the angle of her jaw, the slight gap in her front teeth, the color of her hair, the shape of her hands, and the dimples in her cheeks when she smiled. They made love that night before Brian shared the news with Tess, and when he did, Tess took his face in her hands and studied it as if it were her that was about to go blind.
The doctor had said that surgical removal of both of Brian’s eyes would be the most effective treatment option. If left untreated, the tumors would travel up the optic nerve to the brain and death would soon follow. They sought a second, third, and fourth opinion. Tess wanted to keep trying. She would have sought a ninety-ninth opinion had there been time. It was her insurance from her employer that would cover the tests and ultimately, the procedure to remove her husband’s eyes. Tess worked as a hotel property district manager, her pay was good and the benefits, including their insurance coverage were among the best available. From a financial perspective, the procedure to remove Brian’s eyes would be painless. From a physical and emotional perspective, the procedure would be devastating.
The night before the surgery Brian and Tess stayed up all night. They turned on every light in the house, as if the flow of electrons through copper wire could beat back the arrival of Brian’s long and permanent night. With less than an hour before sunrise they walked back through the house once again and one by one began to extinguish the lights. “I want to go one more time from the darkness into the light,” he had said to Tess.
They sat on lawn chairs in their back yard and held hands in the false dawn of the day, and when the sun peaked over the horizon, Brian looked around the back yard. “I was going to put our garden right over there,” he said as he pointed with his chin. “Flowers and vegetables, and both red and green peppers, tomatoes, green beans. It was going to be beautiful.”
“It will be beautiful,” Tess had said. “You can still do it. I’ll help you.”
“You’ll have to help me with everything. Everything, Tess. I can’t ask that of you. I won’t.”
“Brian, don’t. Please don’t do this now. We’ll figure everything out. One step at a time. I promise. It will all be okay. You’ll see.”
Brian buried his face in his hands for a moment, and then stood.
“Brian, I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean that. It’s a figure of speech.”
“I don’t feel like I’m losing my sight, Tess. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
Now, a little over eleven years later, Brian Goodwell grasped the handrail and walked down the three steps of his back door and into the yard. Seven steps forward, then a ninety-degree turn to the right, then nine steps more. The edge of his garden. He dropped down to his knees, and then felt carefully on both sides to make sure he was lined up properly with the neat rows of vegetables. His garden was getting better and better each year. Tess had told him so.
The first few years had been a disaster. He would sometimes pull the flowers and vegetables by mistake and leave the weeds to grow and prosper. The first year, out of stubbornness, he refused to allow Tess to help him, and the net result of his garden that year had been six green beans, two smashed tomatoes, and one red pepper. But his sense of touch and smell had gotten better over the y
ears and he now knew his way around the garden like the back of his hand.
At the beginning of his second season, Tess confessed to him that she had gone to the market and seeded his garden with produce picked from the aisle instead of the ground. Brian confessed to her that he knew she had done so because he liked to eat the tomatoes raw and had, one afternoon, bitten into one that had a sticker on the side.
But now Brian moved expertly along, feeling first for the stalks and stems of his labor before he pulled any weeds that tried to rise around the plants. When he worked in his garden, he thought only of Tess. It was Tess who had helped him through the last eleven years. It was Tess who remained true to him, who taught him how to be self-sufficient, who did not pity him, who not only told him, but showed him how much of a man he still was, blind or not. Brian loved Tess more than he thought humanly possible.
He’d run his hands across her face, his fingers barely touching the surface of her skin. Every night when she came home from work he would greet her the same way. First a kiss, then he’d get to look at her beauty with his hands. At first, right after the surgery, this worked well for him. He would picture her face in his mind as he ran his hands across her delicate features. But over the years, the picture of her began to fade to what it was now, a dim shadow of a memory, like an under-developed photograph, a ghost of an image. He sometimes thought he’d give his own life to see his wife’s face just one more time. In death he could look down upon her every day.
So Brian spent his days in the garden of his mind with a secret wish that grew unchecked, rooted deep in an unfulfilled desire that he cultivated into a depressive hope of death where he could free himself and Tess from the burden he had placed on them both.
When the Sids pulled the trigger, Brian got his wish.
__________
When consciousness came it was in progressive, laborious steps. Virgil couldn’t see because of the blindfold, but he knew he was naked.
