by R.M. Haig
September 17th, 2016. 5:40PM
Garthby, Indiana
Jake's throat was cooled and irritated simultaneously by more mentholated Newport smoke as another pile of butts was building up outside the window of his Malibu. He sat staring at the Elsmere County Jail, a hellacious week of chaos and mayhem painting the building in an entirely different light than he'd seen it in last. He'd arrived very early for his six o'clock appointment, because fate had intervened and he hadn't been required to drive out to West Pine as he previously thought he would be.
With Father Lovett's revelation that the church van was already in the possession of the police, there was no need to visit Sarge's house to check the VIN of his van against that of Our Mother's Dodge Ram. Apparently, FGSI Services really did own a vehicle that just so happened to be remarkably similar to the one in which Billy Marsh was kidnapped. Beyond that simple fact, Grover Simmonds apparently had absolutely nothing to do with Burlwood's latest child murder, that of little Billy Marsh. That was difficult to accept, especially since Rusty's chosen replacement for him had apparently been one Charles Edward Murphy. Why the old man made that decision -- why he called for a pinch hitter -- was the last lingering question to plague Jake's mind as he smoked and waited for the hour of his visit and Chucky's judgement to arrive.
Immediately after he left Our Mother, he'd called Donnell to confer with him one last time about the details Lovett had provided. As Launchpad sorted the details verbally, he was optimistic as he told Jake that the testimony of Boudreaux's CI's would add up to nothing, now. Rusty was dead and the words of Father Lovett could easily be stricken down by the fact that the confession given him was made in unbreakable confidence. The bloody van could be easily disqualified, as they could place Chucky's fingerprints in it through natural means; his use of it in the capacity as an employee of the church. Anyone could've used it in the commission of the murder, so long as they had the sense to wear gloves to cover their tracks. The fact that it was found in Rusty's storage unit was just further damnation of Rusty himself. It represented evidence to be used in tandem with his confessional suicide note, which clearly spelled out his penchant for murdering children. Sure, it seemed obvious that someone had to help the old man to pull this all off again, but -- on the surface -- there was nothing to prove that Chucky had been that someone.
"We might just see him clear of all this," Donnell had said, as though it was okay to set him free. He seemed unfazed at the notion of helping him escape punishment, even if he were truly guilty, which was a shocking concept for Jake to digest.
Something about it made him sick. Something about it was repugnant, even if his heart was full of empathy and caring for Chucky as he once was. Apparently, the man wasn't that way anymore... at least, not according to what Father Lovett revealed about him. Helping him walk away from all of this, as though nothing had happened, was something that Darkwing would have to give some deep thought and consideration before signing off on. In his current emotional condition, he was not at all fit to make such judgements at the present. He would talk to the man, he would get the truth as he saw it, and he would decide how he felt later... when his mind was clear... if it ever was again.
As he sat flicking ashes out of his window, as he prepared to see his old friend for what would potentially be the last time, he was determined to boil it all down to the truth and let the truth play the hand. This sentiment ran deeper in him than just in regard to this matter with Chucky, however, as he was rapidly cycling through the emotions of the events of his life since he first left Burlwood as a teenager. Like a trial by fire, he was reliving the dark years and wrestling with the ghosts of things he'd done through them. Some of those ghosts wore ugly masks, and some of those masks were reflections of the truth in all of its unpleasant forms. Truth as it applied to Chucky, as it applied to Donnell, as it applied to Tracy and to Garrett and as it ultimately applied to himself. Most of those masks were hard to look at, but it was time for him to see the faces of those truths, in all of their hideous forms and figures.
There were many truths that were hard to stare down as the cool plumes of smoke leaked from his sinuses and lips. These truths were the ones that required him to take a good long look in the mirror and decide just what he saw looking back at him. These truths were the ones in which he saw ugliness, the ones in which he saw a terrible man staring back at him through his own emerald eyes. The ones in which he saw a man he didn't know and didn't like in any sense of the term underneath a mask of his own flesh, his features twisted in contorted in the reality of how he looked inside.
Like the roving goat-headed beast, that's the phrase Father Lovett had used describe Chucky when he allegedly operated under the influence of some uncharacteristic evil. That, too, was what Jake saw reflected back at him in the looking glass when he faced his most truthful truths. He was the destroyer, the blasphemer, the incinerator of all that was good in his life. He was the alcoholic, the gambler, the thief of love, affection and of money. He was the source of every problem that haunted him. He was the black that snuffed out the light. He was the flame and the heat of Hell. He was the monster under his own bed, and he was the shadow that loomed over the darkest moments of his life.
Not knowing how to slay this terrible dragon before him, unsure of how to proceed when nothing but understanding had changed, he'd gassed up his car and purchased two packs of cigarettes with no clear plan about what he was going to do when he left the Elsmere Jail. With those purchases, a number of drinks and snacks for the ride and the basic living expenses he'd incurred over the past several days, he was now left with just eighty-five dollars of the two-thousand that he'd pilfered from his business account.
That certainly wasn't enough to start a new life somewhere else, even though that option seemed most favorable to him of those he could cook up. He'd heard that Tracy was worried about him, that she might be open to his coming home, but he felt that idea was perhaps the worst of all possibilities. That would require a direct confrontation with that goat-headed man in the mirror. That would require an admission of guilt, like the one he expected from Chucky. That would require him to reveal himself as the despicable man he had been and beg his estranged wife fore her forgiveness. Either he would have to do that or he would have to slither in, like the snake that he'd been, and end up shitting all over everything again because he hadn't changed sufficiently in this escapade. This time, that idea was unacceptable. History tends to repeat, but he couldn't allow that in this instance. That would be even more painful than simply calling it a day and moving on.
Suicide, of course, was free of cost -- both financially and emotionally.
To him, at least.
That option was no option at all, though, he'd learned that much in this journey. It served no one, least of all himself, and it was the easy path to take in this situation. No one ever has anything kind to say about someone who takes the easy path. That was evidenced by the legacy his father, Garrett Gigu?re, had left behind when he played that card. A legacy of turmoil and ruin.
No, double indemnity was no longer on the table.
But what, then?
Taking the last drag and feeling that heat on his fingers again, Jake flicked his butt as far as he possibly could this time. Watching the hot ember tear through the evening like a tracer round in a perfect parabolic arc, he was fascinated by the light show it put on as it excited the air around it and lit the evening so gloriously for but the fleeting of a second in its wake. It bounced when it landed on the grass in the distance, as he figured he was probably destined to bounce wherever he himself landed when all was said and done.
It was five minutes to six, time to go inside and sign in for his visitation.
In a state of numb hysteria he checked in with the officers on duty at the front desk, and the officers promptly directed him to the visitation room without delay. Apparently, the orders of Commissioner Dickinson were taken quite seriously within the w
alls of this criminal management establishment. Within seconds, he was sitting in the chair he'd sat in not so very long ago with safety glass before him and a phone to the right of him. His state of mind was so different now than it had been last time he'd been here, and it had to be obvious in his face when Chucky stepped through the prisoner door on the opposite side of the barrier and laid eyes on him once again.
Still, there was that smile of reacquaintance from his old friend that was wide and undeterred. It was as though this was the first time they'd seen each other in years all over again, but Jake couldn't return the smile in kind on this occasion. Assuming his seat and finding his telephone straight away this time, Chucky snatched the handset from the receiver and offered his excited greeting once again.
"Hi Darkwing!" He shouted as though the phone did nothing and he was required to project himself through the thick pane of glass.
"Hi, Chucky," Jake returned flatly.
Catching the lack of inflection and examining his friend's face, Chucky seemed to realize that something was wrong. His own smile fell, ever the empath, and he assumed a deflated posture where he sat.
"It's bad news, isn't it?" He asked somberly.
"You could say that, Chuck," Jake sighed in response.
"You didn't find any clues against Rusty?"
Lowering his head, Jake started to feel some of the pain that he should've been suffering since he realized what Chucky's box of condoms had to mean. He'd suppressed the soul-ache with disbelief and distance, distracting himself with other worries and concerns until this very moment. Until he was face to face with a friend turned evil, a compadre turned child-killer. Until there was nothing else to do but to ask why. Until there was no hiding anymore, from himself or from those awful truths that had to be faced.
"Actually," Jake began, choking back the agony, "I did find things that tied Rusty to what happened."
A smile sneaking up on him, Chucky looked relieved at this.
"That's great!" He exclaimed. "Did they arrest him, like they did to me?"
Guilty at offering hope, Jake was quick to dial it back.
"No, Chucky," he blurted. "No, they didn't arrest him. In fact, Rusty's dead."
This hit the man like a brick, and Jake could almost see the impact it made on his large and meaty chest, knocking the breath from him.
"Dead?" He asked, likely reliving every bit of his friendship with the man at speaking the word. "What happened?"
"He killed himself, Chuck," Jake revealed coldly. "And he left a note confessing to killing all the kids when we were young... confessing to killing Timmy, just like you said."
Chucky melted further into his seat, likely thinking back to that cold Thanksgiving evening when he and Rusty Parker delivered more than just meals to the meek so many years ago. When they delivered the remains of Timmy Lane to various parts of Burlwood, when they delivered arms and legs that were supposed to be those of Jake himself if not for the intervention of fate. He seemed to have nothing to say in response to this information, so Jake sat in the silence for a moment before continuing.
"He also said that Billy Marsh was killed in his garage," he offered.
Further yet Chucky settled into his seat, until it seemed he was barely erect in the chair at all. He became a lump of defeated mass, a shell of a man stripped of his bones and left to wiggle as jelly in his grief.
"And then I found your condoms, Chucky," Jake delivered sharply, pausing for effect between that and his next statement. "And then I spoke with Father Lovett."
Immediately, Chucky broke down and started shuddering with tears. Within seconds he was blubbering just as badly as he had when he'd fallen down and broken his wrist in Booger Woods before they found the scattered parts of Joshua Banks. He was sobbing just as hard as he had been that November morning, when Darkwing was supposed to be dead but the reaper had claimed Drake instead. When he didn't want to go deliver the food with his partner in crime at all because he knew and understood the wrong of what the man had done. Immediately, he was a child all over again and he was overcome with irrepressible emotion.
"Tell me what happened, Chuck!" Jake ordered, offering no sympathy in his tone for the tears of his old friend. "Tell me what you did!"
The fit worsened at Jake's harsh treatment, the wails and moans echoing through the entirety of the facility as Chucky tried to hide from his truths. Truths that were uglier and more menacing than anything Jake's twisted psyche could ever bring to pass. Truths that were despicable and criminal. Truths that were homicidal and malevolent.
"Tell me, Chucky!" Jake shouted over the whining and wailing. "Stop acting like a bitch and tell me, goddam it!"
As though he'd been struck by a bolt of lightening, Chucky stopped sobbing and froze. He'd never been spoken to in such a manner by Darkwing, his best and treasured friend. It was a shock to his system, and it ended his fit cold. He still didn't speak, he still didn't sit upright, but he instantly recovered as though he'd been slapped across the face and commanded to stand at attention.
Jake took note, realizing that his loud tone likely scared Chucky into his new condition. Not wanting to bully anything false from his easily molded friend, he calmed himself as best he could and brought his speech back down into the realm of what could be considered that of a friend.
"Look, Chucky," he began, "I'm not here to hurt you, I'm not here to scare you, I'm not here to get you in trouble. I just --" he paused, having to further throttle his emotion, "I just want to know what happened!"
There was silence at first, for what seemed an eternity, but Chucky eventually summoned the resolve to sit back up and speak.
"What do you want me to say?" He asked.
"I want you to say the truth, Chucky! I just want you to tell me the truth, no matter how bad it is!"
Again, there was a silence while Chucky snorted up snot before he spoke.
"It's bad," he replied. "It's really bad."
"Is it everything that Father Lovett told me? That you and Rusty killed Billy?"
Ashamed to say it, Chucky simply nodded sheepishly.
"Why, Chuck?" Jake asked, flabbergasted. "Why would you do it? Why would you help him do it?"
"I just wanted him to shut up," Chucky replied. "For weeks and weeks, it was all he talked about! That he was dying and that he needed blood to make him better! That Sarge told him he needed to drink a kid's blood!"
"Jesus, are you serious?" Jake asked, and again Chucky nodded. "Why didn't he get Sarge to help him, then?" he wondered.
"Sarge told him he was too old. That he couldn't take wrestling with young boy again, that his heart couldn't take it, so he had to find someone else to help him."
"So what did you do, Chuck? I mean, what exactly did you personally do?"
"Well, I drove to the church that Sunday and I got Billy Marsh to come out to the van for me. He was the only little boy I was friends with, the only one that would come with me. I told him we were going to play with my other friend, and I drove him to Rusty's. I didn't think Rusty was really gonna do something to him! I mean, he's an old and weak guy. I thought Billy and I would play along with him for a minute, then I'd take Billy back to church!"
"What happened instead?"
"Well," Chucky hesitated, looking mortified. "Rusty pulled put some kind of rag and soaked it with this stuff that smelled like oranges. Than he put it over Billy's mouth, and Billy went to sleep."
Again he stopped, as though he didn't want to say anymore. As though it was uncomfortable to say anymore. Jake urged him on with his eyes, and he eventually continued despite the fact that he was obviously pained.
"Once he was asleep, Rusty took off his clothes and looked at him for a minute. That's when he brought out the condoms, but I didn't know what they were inside the box. He asked if I wanted to have some fun because he was too old to do it. I didn't know exactly what he meant, until he took out one of the condoms -- and then I knew w
hat he meant, and I didn't want to do that! Not at all! He gave me the box, said to keep it in case I ever needed them because they were no good to him, that's why they were at my house."
"Just tell me what happened, Chuck!"
"After he looked at him for a while without his clothes, he put some kind of wire around his feet. He had some kind of control box in his hand, and he pressed a button on it that made a machine turn on and make a loud noise. The wire started to pull and it eventually lifted Billy up by his feet, and then he was just swinging in the air, upside-down in the middle of his garage!"
"Go on, Chuck," Jake prodded.
"Then," he said slowly, "he pulled out this big knife and he tried to hand it to me."
Another revelation, another pause in the discussion, another melting on the far side of the glass. Chucky seemed to wilt entirely at this point, and Jake was pretty sure he knew exactly why. He wanted to hear it, though, he wanted to know for sure -- for his own mind's sake.
"Did you take it, Chuck?" He asked as kindly and as lovingly as he could, choking back the disgust and the dismay at what was likely to come.
Chucky, for his part, refused to answer.
His refusal was answer enough for Jake.
It would likely be answer enough for a jury as well, if the matter ever made it that far.
"And then what?" Jake pushed.
"Then Rusty cut him up," Chucky said in horror. "I didn't stay for the whole time, because I had to go to work. That's when Deputy Ron asked me all of those questions, and I just said I didn't know what he was talking about, because I didn't want to get in any trouble. By the time I got back to Rusty's, the van was gone -- and so were Billy's parts. I don't know how he got them to Booger Woods, or what he did with the van. I guess he must've had somebody else helping, I don't know."
A period to digest was required, and it played out in a deafening silence.
"Ya' know, Chucky," Jake resumed after he'd processed things as well as he could. "Donnell seems to think that he can get you out of this. He doesn't think they have enough presentable evidence to find you guilty, unless they've got something we don't know about. What do you think of that? What do you think about you just walking away from this?"
Chucky looked confused and unsure of how to answer properly. He expressed this uncertainty with his eyes, and with his words when eventually he spoke again.
"What do you think of it, Jake?" He asked, speaking his friend's proper name aloud for perhaps the first time in either of their memories.
Soaking it in, feeling the gravity of it, Jake asked himself the same question.
"I dunno, Chuck," he said.
"Well, if I don't walk away from this," Chucky began, "will they put me to sleep? Will they do to me what Doctor Morris did to Ruger?"
"They could," Jake replied honestly.
"No," Chucky retorted, "I mean will they? Like, if we asked them to?"
Dumbfounded and confused, Jake wasn't sure his friend was expressing himself properly. Certainly, he couldn't mean it the way it sounded. Certainly he wasn't on the wavelength of double indemnity.
"What do you mean, Chuck?" He asked, seeking a believable answer to an incredible question.
"I'm so tired, Jake," Chucky replied. "I'm just tired of everything being the same, over and over, every day, every week, every year. I don't have anything, Darkwing, I don't have anybody. Not since you all left town and Momma died. I get up, I go to work, I go home, I struggle to get by because I don't have any money, and then I go to sleep and start it all over again. I'm just tired of being alive, Jake! If they'll put me to sleep, if they'll send me to be with Momma and with Ruger, then that's what I want."
Stunned, shocked, Jake was speechless.
Christ, he didn't know it had gotten so bad for his friend...
Christ, he didn't realize his friend was capable of such thought with his limitations.
How did he answer that statement?
How did he advise a man in the same condition he had been in himself so recently?
How did he walk away from this problem, as he'd walked away and played a part in creating it so many years ago?
"I don't know if that would be best, Chucky," he answered, choking back that damned emotion and the wearisome stinging in his eyes. "I think we're going to get you someone to talk to in here, someone that can help you sort out your thinking. Then, I think we're gonna work with Donnell to see how we can make this right without resorting to... to what you're talking about."
Crying again, Chucky inexplicably pressed his right hand against the glass so hard that it flattened out on the surface. At first, Jake didn't understand what he was doing. Staring at the palm blankly for a moment, he took note of a particular defect in the flesh of his old friend's palm. It was a scar, acquired long ago, and Jake had one very similar to it on his right hand as well.
These were the scars that were used, when the cuts were open, to make the two of them blood brothers. That vow, made in childhood, was something that was meant to be infinite. Realizing that it was infinite, that it was valid for better or worse, Jake pressed his right hand against the glass in a show of solidarity and support.
In the days to come, the both of them would be required to stand and face the things that they had done. They would both suffer the penalties of their wrongs, but they would do so with their own dignity and with honor. They would both be honest and upfront, they would both speak difficult words in the face of prosecution and accept what verdicts would be handed down. They would both throw themselves at the mercy of their own respective courts, and they would both pay the piper for their wrongs and trespasses.
That was the oath they took as the sat staring into each other's eyes, their hands transcending the glass between them and making contact despite the obstacle. That was the promise they made to each other verbally before hanging up their phones and turning their backs on each other once again. As each of them walked towards their exits from the room, they marched head-on into facing the music that they were individually due. The sounds would be quite different for each of them, the process would vary widely between them, but in essence they were doing the exact same thing as one another.
They would march with their heads held high, but they would freely bow in observance of their crimes with a personal sense of shame. They would emerge from their respective tunnels in very different places, but they would share many of the same wounds upon their flesh for the journey. They would be marked, each of them, with black spots for what they'd done... but they would march on, despite the smudge of Cain.
Stopping at the cashier on his way out, Jake made a humanitarian and symbolic deposit. Walking away from the desk, he held a receipt that showed eighty-five dollars recorded on the books for Charles Edward Murphy's commissary account.
Beyond that, he had nothing.
And nothing was exactly what he wanted with him as he made his next big move.
As he climbed into his Malibu, he felt that mark upon brow and the emptiness of having nothing to his name. In his case, in his situation, the mark upon his brow would bare the thumb print of Tracy Swete Gigu?re, for she was his debtor. It was her that he had wronged, it was her that he had failed, it was her that he must make whole. That would require effort given the fact that he would return to her, like the prodigal son, with absolutely nothing but himself and his better intentions. Intentions and desires to be more than he had been. Desires and commitments that he would make to her, his juror and confessor.
He drove late into a stormy night, no longer hearing sirens sing upon the shores of overpasses as he sped by in the dark. He crossed state lines by the glow of headlights and cruised back toward Atlas Avenue East, where this crazy adventure had started out -- and where it should most logically end. Eventually, he was there... staring down a familiar colonial ranch that was dark in the wee hours of the night.
A stranger here, now, he knocked on the front
door instead of using his key. When the porch light came on and lit him, it was a shamed and penitent man that met the beam. He heard the locks being worked as he stood, alone in the night with rain beating down upon his back. When Tracy opened the door, her face painted with surprise, the sting in Jacob's eyes finally gave way and rusted tears rolled down his cheeks. Tasting the salt and iron of them upon his lips, hearing the angry thunder of the gods rolling for him in the distance, he opened his mouth and spoke to his wife.
"Baby," he said, his voice cracking and shaking like a leaf caught up in the torrent, "do you think we could talk?"
