by Jon Talton
Will showed nothing on his face. They were words heard from whites more often in Cincinnati than the chamber of commerce types would admit. He had never used them, even though his father had, abundantly. His mother had disapproved. He waited for Darlene to realize her predicament. She was still handcuffed.
“So you’ll talk to me?”
“Sure, darlin’. But not here on the street. I can’t let my buds think I’m a snitch or something.”
A plan emerged in Will’s mind. “If the officer agrees, and you don’t cause any more trouble… One more call, and you’re going to jail. Got it?”
“Sure.” She sulked.
“Then meet me under the bridge by the Serpentine Wall in an hour. I’ll be sitting there. You’ll find me.”
“No problem.” The officer took off the cuffs and she was beaming.
“Darlene.”
“Yes sir?”
“If you stand me up, I’m going to make sure you do jail time.”
***
Cheryl Beth drove silently, her chin set at a pensive angle.
“I’m sorry to put you in the middle of all this,” Will said.
She shook her head. “I am in the middle. That was just a little too close for comfort.” She pulled back on Columbia and sped up. “I grew up around people like that. I could have been one.”
“I doubt that.”
“I beat the odds. My dad died young. Railroad accident. I think he had some ambitions for all of us. We ended up nearly destitute. The church pretty much took us in until my mom could find work. All she wanted was for me to be a cheerleader in high school, then settle down, get married and have kids. I was the one who wanted to be an honor student and get out of town. I had several friends who got pregnant in high school. All my brothers are still down there. Lord.”
He liked the image of her as a cheerleader, but kept that to himself. He admired the honor student part. His dad had only expected Will to do well at high school football and go to work as a cop. Going to college, much less at a fancy place like Miami University, was beyond his comprehension. And yet Will had come back home and joined the force. Maybe he hadn’t beaten the odds.
***
How do you want to play this? That’s what he or Dodds would say to the other as they worked up a strategy before confronting a suspect or a witness. He found himself missing his old partner in spite of everything. Now it was up to him, even though he was constantly afraid the pain might break through, even though his body was a mess of constipation and foreign sensations.
They went through a Skyline Chili drive-thru and ordered a late lunch. Damn the short winter days. As the day streamed by, the time drew closer when he would have to return to the hospital. But the two cheese Coney dogs were ambrosia. Cheryl Beth ate two as well. Fifteen minutes later, they were set up.
Will wheeled himself into the riverfront park by the contoured mass of concrete called the Serpentine Wall. In the spring and summer, the area would be full of people and boats cruising the river. Today it was deserted. Downtown was behind them and the bridges soared overhead on either side. He found a bench that was easily seen and Cheryl Beth helped him scoot onto it from the chair. He was glad to be rid of the infernal transfer board, but his legs were feeling weaker. Just hold out a little longer. Then he instructed her to take the chair back to the car and stow it. She rejoined him and they silently watched the cold, swift, concrete-brown river flow past, and, on the other side, the old brick buildings of Newport and Covington. He thought about his morphine dream of dead children and quickly banished it. The park was one of his favorite places. Overhead, the American flags snapped noisily in the breeze, and the flying pigs looked cold up on their ornate columns. It wasn’t long before he saw Darlene walking quickly toward them from the east, emerging from the shadows of an old bridge abutment.
“So what are we doin’? It’s freezing.”
“Have a seat.” Will indicated for her to sit beside him. Cheryl Beth was on his other side.
“So you have a new boyfriend? What does Bud think about that?”
Darlene held her arms around herself tightly, shivering despite wearing several layers of clothes.
“Screw Bud.” She said it like spitting. “I don’t give a damn what he thinks.”
“How come?”
“How the hell come? He’s the one got me on the meth. Fucked up my life big-time. Then he leaves me. Haven’t seen him for a year.”
“Now, Darlene, you know anything you tell me can be used against you in a court of law.”
“What? You’re a narc now, Detective Will? That baby cop told me all that stuff. I’ve heard it before. Why are we out here? Can’t we go sit in the car?”
“This won’t take long.” He fought to sit normally on the bench, so Darlene wouldn’t know he needed the wheelchair, that he wasn’t really on duty. That she wouldn’t notice how his weak left leg fell out to the side, ever so unnaturally. He wanted to shift his weight every minute or two to ease the discomfort. He stayed still.
Darlene held her face in profile as she stared at the mesmerizing river. It looked as if she had aged a decade since he had talked to her two years before. Her skin was pale and freckled, and now it was deeply creased. It bore a moonscape of small scars. She pulled out a pack of Camels and lit one, puffing on it nervously. The smoke mingled with the mist from her breath and it all came into his face.
“I just need to clear a few things up about an old case.”
She looked at him and stubbed out the cigarette. “You mean the murder.”
“Yes.”
She lit another smoke and stared at the river.
“Been a long time ago. That boy went to prison. I hear he died there.”
“That’s right.” Will watched the river and let her smoke and stew. The cold was on his side. He had never minded it. “You said Bud was with you that night.”
“He was there. He came by most nights, when he was working nights.”
“You guys never lived together?”
“No. He wouldn’t.”
“He’d moved out on his wife. Seems like he’d want to be with a pretty thing like you.”
“He said he needed his space, whatever the hell that means. Men say that. He’d come by some nights, some afternoons. We’d fuck and he’d leave. True love, huh?”
“Who knows?” He waited, let the cold stab at her. Then, “Maybe he had a girl on the side.”
She was inhaling furiously, the skin above her upper lip showing ribs of wrinkles. The river slapped noisily at the concrete and traffic droned on the interstate overhead. Quietly, he heard her say, “Son of a bitch…”
“I don’t mean to upset you,” Will said. “You know how some men are. Girl on the side here, girl on the side there, always too busy to spend much time.”
“Son of a bitch.” She said it louder this time.
“How’d you get on meth?”
“He brought it one day. Said he’d taken it off a dealer and it might be fun. It sure as hell was. Only he just drank Jack Daniels while I did it. Fuck, it wrapped around me like a snake…”
“When’d he do this?”
“Couple years ago.”
“Before or after his wife was killed?”
She thought for a moment. “Before.”
“So did you have to go out and buy it, once you got hooked?”
“No, he’d bring me some. I thought I had a real sugar daddy.”
“You can get treatment.” This was Cheryl Beth. Darlene lit another Camel and leaned forward to look at her.
“You sound like you’re south of the river, pretty eyed girl.”
“Corbin, Kentucky,” Cheryl Beth said.
“I got people down that way,” Darlene said. “Down by Bailey’s Switch?”
“I know Bailey,” Cheryl Beth said.
Will wished she hadn’t gotten Darlene off track, but then he changed his mind. He knew how they’d play it.
“Darlene, about that night, when
Theresa Chambers was murdered…”
“Yeah, yeah, Detective Will, you have a one-track mind.”
“It wasn’t really true was it?”
“What?” She hesitated just long enough.
“I didn’t think so,” Will said.
She twitched and huddled into herself. “He told me he’d kill me if I told you the truth.”
Will told her she would be safe, and that moment he thought he could leap up and dance along the Serpentine Wall. She had come right out and said it.
“I had to cover for him, don’t you understand?” She hugged herself tightly, staring down at the sidewalk. “He got me my stuff. I woulda died without it. He said he had a dealer under his thumb, that’s just how he said it. And if I didn’t do what he said, he wouldn’t bring me my fix. Then when you guys called, he said he’d kill me if I didn’t say things happened his way.”
“So he wasn’t with you that night?”
She shook her head.
Will asked her again and she nearly shouted “No!” then reached back in her coat pocket, pulled out the pack, and lit another cigarette. She was crying now. “Are you gonna arrest me? Take me to jail? I’m clean now. I got a baby now, Detective Will, please, God, don’t…”
“Just tell me the truth, Darlene.”
“It’s going to be all right,” Cheryl Beth said.
Darlene rubbed her nose and scrunched her face. “Who are you, girl? You don’t have a cop face.”
Will intervened. “What if I told you she was a witness.”
Suddenly Darlene seemed to age another ten years and her face turned bright red before losing its color entirely. Even the veiny damage from her boyfriend’s fist seemed to drain of blood. “Wha…? How is that possible? Oh, fuck. Bud said nobody could…” Her words became an unintelligible blubber with the occasional “they’re gonna take my baby” coming through. Will put his hand on her arm and she fell into his shoulder bawling. He fought not to tilt sideways into Cheryl Beth.
“Tell me how it happened, Darlene. This doesn’t have to go badly for you if you tell the truth.”
“He just told me to tell you that he was with me. He said the bosses were after him, trying to fire him. I never knew anything about his wife being killed…”
“So you covered for him.”
She nodded, kept crying. She was shivering and her teeth chattered from the cold. “But he said nobody would know, nobody would see us. I didn’t know what he was going to do. I swear to God, I swear to God…”
Every nerve tensed in Will’s body. He had used the word “witness” to describe Cheryl Beth. It had opened all the doors. He said, “So you didn’t think anybody would see. Don’t you want to tell your side of the story?”
She sat back up, miraculously avoiding leaving cigarette burns in Will’s overcoat. She leaned out again to stare at Cheryl Beth.
“Bud brought that boy home. Bud was a kinky one, you know? We did some weird stuff, you know? He really liked it. But no way was I goin’ to fuck some street nigger, much less a retard. Poor thing, looked scared as hell. Bud could do that to you. But he told us what to do.” She gently touched her black eye. “I’m cold, Detective Will.”
“Just tell it the way you remember it, Darlene.”
She spoke slowly, the mist from her breath and cigarette smoke wreathing her head. “Bud told me to take off my clothes and get in bed and play with myself. ‘Put on a show for him,’ he said. And he had that boy sit in a chair and watch me.” She hesitated, then continued. “Bud told him to jerk off in this plastic bottle he gave him. That’s what we did. That’s all we did. And Bud let the boy go. I just thought it was weird shit, you know? I said, ‘Why you keeping his come in that bottle?’ He didn’t answer. Nobody was gonna get hurt.”
She had pulled him through a door he didn’t even know existed. He had a dozen questions, but didn’t dare ask them. She believed Cheryl Beth had seen this. Will couldn’t let her think otherwise.
Suddenly Darlene was talking rapidly, trying to purge it from her memory. “I never knew what Bud was going to do. I swear to God. That morning, he come by, all agitated. He said he found her body, Theresa. He swore to me that he didn’t kill her, but he said he had to put that boy’s come on her body because the other cops would frame him, say he done it because he was the husband and she had a restraining order against him and all. He told me what to say. God, I was scared! Fuck, it was hard keeping my head straight.”
“So,” Will said, “just to be clear, did you know who Bud brought home that night?”
“I never seen him before. Just said his name was Craig.”
“The one we arrested for murder, right?”
“Yes sir.”
“And when did Bud bring him home to you, when did you do this?”
“It was two nights before the killing.”
“How do you remember that, what with the meth and all?”
She smiled, sniffled loudly. “It was my birthday.”
Will stared into the opaque river and said nothing. The day was cold and dying. At last he spoke through the chill, “Darlene, you’re going to have to give a statement. Are you willing to do that?”
“Yes. Yes, I am…just let me keep my baby.”
He patted her arm and told her she could go. She stubbed out the last Camel, tossed it into the growing pile of cigarette filters on the sidewalk, and stood. She walked two steps and turned.
“I always liked you, Detective Will. Always thought you were fair. I never believed what Bud said about you.”
It was a moment of premonition, the nanosecond where the bullet leaves the rifle and strikes a target even before its sound is heard. But Will asked, “What did Bud say?”
“That you killed Theresa.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Cheryl Beth was relieved for the physical effort of folding the wheelchair and lifting it into the back of her car. When she almost lost control of it, nearly tossing it into the air, she knew the level of her emotions. Yet she could say nothing once she was in the car. Will was on his cell phone, obviously talking to Detective Dodds. She could only hear his end of the conversation.
“Darlene gave it all up…calm down…never mind why I’m not in the hospital…”
She could hear the angry percussions of Dodds’ voice coming through Will’s phone, interrupting nearly every sentence, but she couldn’t make out the words.
“Are you done now? She admits he wasn’t with her the night Theresa died, and she explained how he planted the DNA evidence…of course, I Mirandized her…She’s got a kid now, so you’ve got leverage…He turned her into a tweaker but she says she’s clean now…She’s in the same crappy little house, yes, she’s there…You’ve got to get over there now and take her statement, get her protected, and get a warrant out on him. Pull him in for anything, just get him and hold him…I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job…Because somebody had to…You know where to find me.”
She listened to Will talk, such enthusiasm in his voice. Her emotions were lava under pressure.
“Will Borders, you’d better the hell tell me what’s going on because there’s nothing I hate more than being lied to.” She turned in the seat to face him, refusing to break eye contact, talking as adamantly with her hands as with her voice. “I’ve watched you these weeks as you’ve struggled and worked, and I’ve admired you. I never would have let you hurt as long as you did if I’d known and I stopped it. And then I got you out today, you go and get a damned gun, and this trailer girl talks about this man saying you killed that woman, and, God, you’d better stop lying to me right now! I’m sick of people lying to me! You’d better tell me what’s going on right now!”
She threw it out as the words boiled out of her mind. One of the docs used to make gentle fun of her when she was that intense, the exclamation points shooting out of her, calling it “running hot.” She was running hot. She stared at Will as he meekly put his phone away and reached down to rearrange his left leg. H
is eyes were wide.
“What do you want to know?”
“Did you kill her?”
“No.”
“Then why did that girl say you did? Why did Lennie think you were the devil?”
“You think I killed Christine Lustig? That would be quite a trick.”
“Don’t play games with me,” she snapped. “You know exactly what I mean.”
“I didn’t kill Theresa.”
“How do I know that?” she demanded.
“I was with Dodds that night.”
“But he said you lied to him. I heard you two, fighting in the morgue. He said you left homicide because he fired you, because you lied to him.” She pushed herself back into the seat and stared out at the park. “What did you lie about?”
He sighed and adjusted his tie. “Theresa.”
Something in the way that he said her name crashed against Cheryl Beth’s anger and mistrust, leaving her off balance. She said, “Were you sleeping with her?”
“Yes.”
There it was. Cheryl Beth looked straight ahead. The park was becoming a faded dream as their breath fogged over the windshield. It was growing cold inside the car, but she didn’t make a move to turn the key.
Will’s voice was drained of its previous excitement. “It was three years ago. I walked into a bar downtown. It was a slow evening and there weren’t many people there. I walked between the tables and knocked her purse over, and I bent down to help her. We talked for a minute. She looked so sad. I’d never seen anyone look so sad. But there was this beauty, this grace, hidden behind it. So I sent a drink over to her table, and in a minute she came and joined me…”
“You were cheating on your wife?” She noticed he wasn’t wearing a wedding band, but his chart showed a contact, Cynthia Holland, as his wife.
He gave a sour laugh. “We’d separated, again. She was seeing a man on the side. Or was it two?”
“So you and this woman…”
“Her name was Theresa.”
His voice sounded as if it had hit a sandbar.
“She didn’t want to get involved with a cop again,” he said. “But we did.” He spoke more slowly, pausing, his mind far from the cold inside of the car. “She’d never had anybody be good to her. Never had flowers sent to her. A car door opened for her.”
