A scent of alcohol flushes up his nose. He wants a sip, craves a sip. The addiction returns. But he throws it away. Not yet. Another time, Shawn, another time.
Somehow Shawn manages to push his friend out the door. The rising day around them has yet to really begin. A pale yellow glow comes from the sky. Cars speed along the nearby road, heading to work or fun morning activities. For a brief moment, Shawn wonders what it’d be like to be one of those people — living a normal life with a decent paycheck, not worried about making it every single day, living and not surviving. And then his friend coughs and a wave of the alcoholic and copper scent rushes back toward him, waking him from a daydream and goal that never was.
“You alright?” Shawn asks.
Brandon shakes his head. “I screwed up man, I really screwed up.”
The copper smell unnerves Shawn. It sends chills up his spine, makes his stomach flip. The events of the previous night are still fresh. Worries over a hit and run have morphed into something even greater. The great danger hangs over them like a cloud. Running away isn’t an option anymore. Shawn has to stay.
The doorbell chimes again, and this time it’s Cassie who walks out, her purse locked around her shoulder. She slowly approaches Shawn and Brandon like a curious kid at a petting zoo, unsure if the animals will bite her hand off.
“Cassie, hey,” Shawn says, ignoring his friend and approaching the girl. “I’m sorry I left in a hurry, I just didn’t want to cause a scene.”
Her eyes focus on Brandon. “Is he okay?”
“He’s not great. I don’t really know what happened?”
“Is this your friend from last night?”
“Yeah.”
“Why do I feel like you lied to me?”
Time to come clean, Shawn. Let out the skeletons, take out the laundry. Your chances are probably ruined now anyway.
“No, he needed a ride,” — and it’s true, he did — “but just the reasons around it are a little different than what I told you. He got into a hit and run and then just ditched the entire scene.”
“And you helped him?”
“Like I said, back home, friends are family.”
“Yeah, but your friends seem like idiots.”
“He’s worked really hard for his career, okay? He’s worked wicked hard to get where he is. Can’t let that all go spiraling down for nothing. Where we come from, you don’t make your dreams come true. You just don’t. But when someone makes it, you have to work your hardest to keep it going.”
“Yeah, but what does that do for you?”
The question stuns him into stone.
“What?”
She sounds annoyed now. “What has his success ever brought you?”
Nothing. The answer is nothing. Shawn hasn’t received any sort of benefit from Brandon’s time in the limelight. Brandon even played in Boston a year ago and didn’t even reach out to Shawn. No tickets, no dinner, no brief phone conversation. Just absence, like the two weren’t even friends to begin with. Like they were never friends at all.
“Shawn,” she sighs heavy, almost like she’s explaining something to a child, like there’s a lesson to be learned. “You can’t keep this up. You can’t always be so nice to the people you love, okay? You just can’t. You have to be tough with them.”
Advice comes as a double-edged sword. Life hands you advice that’s either amazingly brilliant or dubious and doubtful at best. This was one of the former. A sense of relief washes over him. The thought of avoiding all the help for loved ones, or focusing on himself for the greater good, warms him. This isn’t his fight, and it really doesn’t need to be anymore.
“So what do I do?”
“You help him get help. Turn him into the cops and let him deal with it.”
He paces around, back and forth, hands on his hips. Brandon sits collapsed against the wall of the diner now, his head leaning against his arm, a tear or two falling from his eyes. He doesn’t want to be here anymore than Shawn does. He’s ruined his career, his life. Even if he gets away with the crime, a disaster still exists in the wake.
Shawn crouches low before his friend.
“What do you want to do, buddy?”
He shakes his head. “I can’t keep running.”
“So what do we do?”
The answer like the sun emerges from gray skies. Brandon buries his head into the crevice of his elbow, almost as though he has a bad cough. He sobs his tears into the pit, sobbing at the funeral of the life he lives now.
“Come on man, we’ve got to do this.”
Brandon wipes his face clean from the tears and the gunk that’s fallen on his face.
“It’s not that simple. Not anymore,” he says, pink eyes looking up at Shawn.
“Why?”
Brandon pushes himself off the wall. The hysteria drains out of him and a more peaceful landscape unfolds upon his face.
“I made a mistake.”
“Another one?”
Cassie tugs on Shawn’s arm. “We have to let this go.”
“The driver, the one I hit, he’s still alive, Shawn,” Brandon says, “but last night, I was just, really, just really freaked out about all of this and so I found out who it was, and that’s why I was talking with Hugo, and so I found out where he lived and found him and I just,” the words trail off. Tears rush towards his eyes. Shawn expects the worse. “My shirt is bloody for a reason, okay?”
Cassie steps forward. “You beat him up?”
“I had to.”
“No, you didn’t,” she fires back.
“Well, I did, okay, just to keep him from talking. But I know he got a good look at me. One Google search and I’m sure he’ll find out who I am.”
The piece slowly fit together.
“So you’re wanted for a hit and run and possibly an assault,” Shawn says. Brandon confirms with a nod.
“You have to turn yourself in,” Cassie says, stepping forward. She has no clue about who Brandon is or what it’s like to be from their hometown. But she pushes anyway. “It’s the right option and you know it.”
“I can’t,” he says, “everything will fall apart. All of it. My career, my life, the money I’ve made, the hope.”
“Come on man,” Shawn says. Cassie encourages him by touching his lower back. “You can do this, okay? We just need to find the latest police station.”
A smile cracks on Brandon’s face.
“And then what?”
“We’ll turn you in.”
“Think about it, Shawn,” he says, pacing around now, a pep in his step. “What happens when you turn me in, huh? They’re going to ask where I’ve been, who I’ve been with, and I know they’re going to want to talk to you. And what are you going to tell them about last night? That you helped me escape the cops?”
More puzzle pieces slide together and the larger picture comes the fruition. Shawn can’t turn him in. The risk is too great. And who’s to say that even if he let Brandon turn himself in that the celebrity wouldn’t offer any confession about Shawn.
Shawn’s destiny hung in the balance, too.
“You’re both idiots,” Cassie says at last, coming between the two friends. “I just hate guys like you. You just beat people up or hurt people like you own the world and then you feel forgiveness for it after.”
“Who the hell are you?” Brandon asks. “You don’t know us.”
“I know Shawn, and I know you, too. Maybe not personally, but I’ve been with enough dummies in the past to know when he’s got major issues with how he handles himself and handles life,” she says, shutting him down. The flame grows inside of Brandon. Shawn watches it descend quickly. Thankfully, the burn will rest, for now.
Cassie swings around faces Shawn.
“I can’t do this if all we’re going to do is run,” she says. “I like you. I like you more than I thought. And the last few days have been really good. If you want me, we have to do the right thing. Otherwise, I’m gone.”
And yet
she’s not gone. She saw the potential damage unfold before her very eyes. She watched him get into a fight with this blood-soaked man. She followed him out into the road. She’s not leaving. For some reason, she wants to hang around, to stay with Shawn.
“Why haven’t you run?” he asks.
“What?”
“Why haven’t you run away? Like, why haven’t you left me? I’m standing here with a criminal of a friend, running away from my hometown, and you’re staying? Why?”
She shakes her head and paces around the street corner. Her hands find her hips and tears start to swell around her eyes. She buries him by biting her tongue, keeping the flood of emotions from rushing out of her body.
“Because I want to run,” she says. “But I want to run with you. Far away.”
Shawn always knew Cassie held a secret within her. From the moment they met, he could tell she skulked something more dubious beneath her in the shadows of her mind. An ex-boyfriend with an abusive history was but the tip of the iceberg.
“You want to run?”
“When you told me you were here from Lowell, I thought it’d be a really easy way to get out of town. To leave it all behind.”
“Why would you want to run away?”
Brandon throws his hands in the air. “Here we go.”
Shawn ignores him, his eyes lock on Cassie.
“I lied, too,” she says.
The wave smashes into Shawn. He almost falls over.
“I’m still with him,” she says, placing an emphasis on the last word. “And I want to get away. It’s why I come to the diner everyday. To get away.”
Still with the boyfriend, itching to get away, to ditch the broken relationship.
“He’s going to find me wherever I go, unless I go really far. Unless I get out of here. Just get away and never come back.”
On the corner, the three of them stand in the heat of the moment, stuck in a messy painting of their lives. Onlookers avoid them like the plague. A cold, hard man, a blood-soaked celebrity and a sobbing young woman. Nothing pretty comes from this picture. It’s all mess, it’s all chaos.
All three are on the run.
And all three need an exit.
Massachusetts
Mathias
“Samson, anything about the tip?”
Once in awhile, Mareek Mathias wants to do one thing and one thing only — smack young and arrogant rookies across the face. On days when the coffee is bean water, she dreams of digging her nails into the sides of their cheeks, pulling on their jaws so she can tell them just how much pain and suffering goes into this job if you want to be good at it. She sees those greenhorn, dumb smirks on their faces and watches herself rip them right off.
Ugh. Tylenol would do her wonders right now.
Samson jumps when he sees her, the clapping heels against the ground are just a storm warning. His skin jerks and his eyes bug out. He stinks of fear. Looks like it to, what with the sweat lathering the front of his head.
“Yes, ma’am?” He looks away in all sorts of directions. The ground, the ceiling, anything to avoid real eye contact.
“I asked you a question, Samson. What about the tip?”
“I gave it to Officer Hughes,” he says with a smile. “Told him all about the California restaurant.”
“Anything come of it?”
“I haven’t had a chance to speak with Officer Hughes yet, no.”
“Well, don’t you think you should?”
Samson’s eyes trail past her. “He’s leaving right now,” he says with a nod.
She swings around. Hughes hobbles down the front steps, the aging old man with a thinning pate descending toward the sun-lathered double doors. He bursts through and for a second the sunlight blinds the room. Samson smiles at her.
“Take your dumbass smile off, rookie,” she says.
His eyes fall to the ground. “Yes, ma’am.”
An inner rage climbs up her throat and into her nails. The sensation of severe injury to his cheek bones and neck pulsate against her nails. Just one quick strike and it’ll all be over. Maybe if she injures him enough, she can hire a veteran cop to take his place. Not some dumbass rookie who thinks he knows a thing or two about investigative work.
“You were the one who told Hughes about the ex-boyfriend, right?”
Samson’s mouth twitches. “Yeah, yeah, um, the ex-boyfriend. Bucky?”
“I wasn’t aware Mary had an ex-boyfriend. We’ve talked to her a few times throughout the investigations and she’s never mentioned an ex.”
“Never?”
“Not once.”
His face hardens. It’s the face she’s often seen from plenty of men over the years — the one of jealous rage when he’s been bested by a woman. He must have thought he had been right about the ex-boyfriend, when in reality he couldn’t have been more wrong. The shame that runs through him must have stammered his shining light. A true cop wouldn’t let it bother him. But this sack of young nothingness, his face reminded her of the frozen piece of chicken in her freezer — pale, pink and rigid.
“I hear she had an ex-boyfriend out in California, that’s all I know,” he says. “If you don’t want to take my advice, don’t.”
“We’ll take your advice when it’s right,” she says with a smile. “Speaking of which, Samson, why are you helping Hughes out with this case so much?”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, it seems weird to me, you know, that you’re giving him a lot of details for the case, when you’re not on it and should be doing your own desk work.”
“Did he ask you to help him out?”
“No.”
“Samson. Tell me the truth.”
She sees the inner workings of the Samson System begin to churn. He doesn’t want to admit the guilt. He can’t keep his eyes stuck on one spot over another, locked in a doomed back-and-forth game where he searches for stability but only finds hopelessness.
“Yes, he did,” he confesses. “The old man, I just feel bad.”
“Well, I can’t blame him. He’s got a lot on his plate.”
“I told him I’d be willing to help out with his son’s case, you know? I didn’t want him working it alone if Shawn’s really on the bend this time.”
“Of course,” she says. “I understand.” Of course she does. Her rookie days were spent climbing the institutional latter with ass-kissing and case loading. She buried herself under mounds of other people’s paperwork to move her career trajectory in the right direction. So many signatures for other cops who could have taken the extra thirty seconds to do it themselves. The carpel tunnel she suffered when she was a rook still bothers her to this day.
“I just, I don’t know what to do,” he says ruefully, “I keep trying and trying to make that guy my mentor, help him out so he can work less and get more done, but he just won’t budge, you know?”
“I understand,” she says. And now she doesn’t want to scratch his eyes out. There’s something about the young rookie that’s rather endearing. All he wants is a better career, a better chance to protect and serve. Sort of like her back in the old days.
He wipes a tear away from his eyes. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have been crying on the job.”
“You’re fine,” she says, lightly touching his arm. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day? Head home and just relax for a little bit?”
He nods, snorting up the gloopy snot that’s begun to drop from his nose. “That would be good. I can finish making some calls from home.”
He leaves her after a few slow and pain free goodbyes. He leaves the department into the basking golden light. Maybe the vitamins will do the boy good. It’s tough to be a police officer at such a young age. You’re still trying to figure yourself out, and yet you have to figure out how to protect and serve the community at the same time. Rarely does that weigh lightly on a person.
About a half an hour later, she’s at her desk, filling out more paperwork which is now actually a part of her job
. Signature after signature, initial after initial. This is the busy work, the simple tasks that’ll help move the red tape along through the pitfalls of bureaucracy. Slowly but surely the office chips away at the knots that bind them. One day, she knows, they’ll be free from it all.
Two hard knocks wake her from the droning slumber of paperwork. It’s an officer. Duncan. She never forgets a fellow woman cop’s name.
“Detective, we’ve got a situation.”
She rolls back in her chair. “What’s that?”
“We’ve kept an eye on Hughes like you asked, just to make sure he wasn’t hiding his son and, well, one of our patrols followed him just now.”
Now she suddenly wants to rip Duncan’s cheeks apart.
“Speak.”
Duncan gulps.
“It looks like he had a situation outside when he left. Someone broke his window with a gun and made him drive away and now they’re headed out to the south part of town.”
“The south part of town.”
“Yes ma’am. We’ve tracked them and we’ve found that they’re at Officer Samson’s house.”
“Did we send patrol out?”
“Yes, ma’am we just did.”
Duncan stands in the doorway, arms crossed against his chest.
“Well? Is that it? Why are you still here?”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but when we were rushing over to tell you this, we grabbed Samson’s file and we found something.”
An even younger officer jogs by the door, doubles back and hands Duncan a manilla folder. She slams it on the sleek titanium table, flipping it open and dashing past a slew of sheets until she finds the right one. It’s a younger image of Samson from about a year ago when he joined the force.
And now it all makes sense. Even more sense than before. The desire to help Hughes, the tips, the confession, the tears. All of it makes sense.
“We’ve got to go,” she says, scooting her chair back and rushing towards the door. “You’re with me. Grab a few more squad cars. We’ve got to get there fast.”
Nessus Page 13
