A Dangerous Affair (4 page)

She stowed her cleaning supplies in the butler pantry organized more methodically than a surgical suite. She aligned the canned goods an inch apart and six inches from the front of the shelf, the way Alan liked it. Cereal, oatmeal, and breakfast bars faced out from the middle rack above the paper products. Toiletries and other sundry items were segregated in colored bins on the bottom racks.

When she heard the garage door open, she pressed her hands along her dress to flatten wrinkles. She washed up in the powder room sink and primped her hair.

"You're home." She greeted her husband with a peck on the cheek. She could smell the cheap perfume on his collar.

Sheriff Blanchart hung his hat in the closet the same way he did every time he came home, except on the special nights when he brought home flowers or a box of Jamie's favorite candy.

Tonight wasn't one of those nights.

"Did you make the appointment?" Blanchart asked bluntly. He unfastened his duty belt and hung it on the closet hook beside his hat.

Jamie touched the butterfly tattoo etched between the dermal layers of skin on her upper back. A spring break memento from a college road trip to Daytona Beach, the tattoo served as a constant reminder about the consequences of her actions, and how at times, even the best intentions could have a negative affect. "I called the doctor's office this morning," she said. "I have an appointment for next week."

Blanchart stooped to kiss her. Nearly ten inches taller than his life partner, he cupped Jamie's chin in his hand the way a forensic pathologist might examine a human skull.

Jamie looked down. "I have to check on dinner." She reached for an oven mitt in the sliding drawer by the stove. There were no indecisions with Alan. His mood was hot or cold; content or irate; happy or sad. Sometimes he came home himself, and sometimes he came home a stranger in his own skin. On the good days, he kept to himself. On the bad days, he made her the center of attention.

Jamie opened the oven to check the meat thermometer. A blast of hot air greeted her face. "How was work?"

Blanchart ran his hand along the countertop to check for dust. "Not great."

"I cooked beef tonight," said Jamie. "Your favorite."

Blanchart shook his head. "Not tonight."

Jamie closed the oven. "I can save it for tomorrow."

Blanchart took a beer from the fridge. "This isn't cold enough."

Jamie stiffened. "I just got home from the store."

"Which one?"

"The same one I always go to. I saved the receipt."

Blanchart twisted off the cap and moved to the sliding glass doors facing the screened porch outside. "The pool looks dirty."

"The guy didn't come today. I called this afternoon and left a message."

Blanchart nudged a crooked wedding picture on the wall near the kitchen. He drank his beer in solitude, his thoughts distracted by recent events. "Did the mail come?" he asked rhetorically.

"I put it in the basket."

"Did anyone call?"

"Not that I know of."

Blanchart downed his beer. "I lost a deputy today."

"Oh my God..." Jamie pulled the roast from the oven and set it on the stove to cool. "What happened?"

"Simon Carter died in the line of duty."

Jamie recognized the name. "His wife just had a baby."

Blanchart picked at the beer bottle label with his thumbnail and hovered close to his wife. He touched her shoulder with his other hand. "I need to schedule his service. We should send his family flowers."

Jamie reached up to touch his hand. "Are you okay?"

Blanchart pulled away. He rinsed the empty bottle in the sink and squeezed it in a vise-like grip. "If I want your sympathy, I'll ask you for it."

"I'm sorry."

"For what? You didn't kill him."

Jamie transferred the roast to a storage container with a lid and left Alan to his own machinations. She shared a tenuous connection with her husband of twelve years and knew what buttons to avoid.

Blanchart squeezed the bottle harder, his jaw muscles twitching from the effort.

The brown glass imploded with a pop. Broken pieces clinked in the double sink.

Blanchart stared at the thorn of splintered glass stabbing his palm. Blood drizzled toward his sleeve.

Jamie retrieved the first aid kit from the pantry and tore open a pack of four-by-four gauze. "That cut looks deep."

Blanchart rolled his sleeve back, plucked splintered shards without flinching and rinsed the blood to expose the sliced skin. He dried his hand on a dishtowel and pressed the gauze on the deepest cut. Blood pooled in the cotton fiber.

"You might need stitches," said Jamie.

Blanchart wrapped the dishtowel around his hand. "Clean up this mess and don't let the glass go down the drain." He left the room momentarily and returned with the flashlight from his duty belt.

Jamie could see the vein throbbing at her husband's temple, knew blood pounded in his head—as it always did when he considered she'd stepped out of bounds. He could tolerate only so much before his patience snapped and his role as her husband and care provider reverted to that of teacher. During the course of their marriage, he'd taught her many lessons to educate her in a manner consistent with his beliefs.

Jamie used a wet napkin to wipe the glass fragments from the stainless steel basin.

Blanchart raised the flashlight. "You missed some."

"Where?"

Blanchart shone the light in the garbage disposal. "Down there."

Jamie peered inside the disposal opening. Light reflected off the broken glass. "How do I get them out?"

"One piece at a time."

"I can't reach in there," Jamie said with an apologetic tone. Her face was ashen.

"I'll hold the light."

Jamie stared at the garbage disposal. Her pulse raced. She brushed her fingers on the rubber trap above the circular metal teeth inside the grinding chamber. "My hand won't fit."

"Yes it will."

"What if it gets stuck?"

"It won't."

"What if the motor comes on by accident?"

Blanchart thrust the light in her face and touched his wounded hand to the garbage disposal switch. "Do you trust me?"

Jamie felt the knot tighten in her throat as if an invisible noose slowly choked the life out of her. She nodded almost imperceptibly and whispered, "Yes."

Blanchart leaned closer and touched her face. "Good. Because a marriage without trust ends in mayhem."

Chapter 4

Lloyd gazed through layers of pollen, dust, and carbon emission residue caked on the prison bus window. Mesmerized by the sun's orange glow fading beneath the central Florida landscape of banana palms and hibiscus shrubs, he held his breath until his starving lungs forced him to inhale.

He wasn't dreaming.

His departure from the regimented life in a cell block dorm was happening in real time, in living, vibrant color, but without the fanfare he'd imagined. His chance to start over, to pick up where his life had ended ten years ago, had finally come to fruition. The light felt brighter. The air smelled cleaner. The freedom he'd dreamed about tasted sweeter than a cane sugar soda. He had the rest of his natural days to look forward to. And many disturbing images to forget.

Lost in his own solitude, he shared a bench seat with the same correctional officer who initially indoctrinated him to a world behind bars—an irony gone unnoticed until Lloyd recognized the guard's hand deformity, where two fingers grew together as one and ended at a point with a single nail. A thick beard hid the man's hardened face—a man who'd lost his voice box to cancer and his conscience to the devil himself.

A fitting end, Lloyd thought, to the bastard who reaped profits from the pain and suffering of younger inmates recruited to participate in human cock fights—gang-bangers, mostly, with lots of attitude and little common sense, lured by the promise of easy coin and special favors if they won with a vicious display of force. Most of them fought the good fight and returned to their cells physically and emotionally bludgeoned by bigger, meaner, hungrier machines disguised as men.

After years of powdered milk and dirty water, Lloyd salivated over thoughts of cold beer, warm steak, and a hot baked potato or fries. Not the lame-dick fries the prison served, but the over-salted, golden brown crunchy ones McDonald's cranked out by the millions. The salted grease would melt in his mouth the way the glob of whipped butter would dissolve on his open baked potato. And yet despite his desire for real food, a more potent hunger gnawed at him, a deeper emotional famine he experienced during his lengthy incarceration.

When the bus arrived at the scheduled destination, Lloyd stepped out as a free man in his jeans and leather ankle boots embroidered with a cross on one side, the same clothes he wore the day the judge passed sentence in the courtroom and tore his family apart.

He ventured across the street toward an abandoned strip mall and a bus shelter, where a handful of weary travelers waited for the public transportation to arrive.

"You got a light?" a young woman asked. She approached Lloyd with her arm akimbo and an unlit cigarette between her fingers.

"Sorry," Lloyd told the mocha-skinned girl in a miniskirt and heels with a wig and glitter nail polish. "I don't smoke." He advanced toward the bus shelter with the girl in his shadow, swinging her arm in sync with her hips. "Can I help you?" he asked.

A streetlight petered out overhead after several seconds of random flickering.

"Tell me what you did."

"Excuse me?"

"I saw you come off the short bus," the girl explained. "That bus only stops here once a month. Mostly after dark."

Lloyd pressed on.

The girl followed. "Were you a dope slinger? A car jacker? You ever kill anybody? The cops found a joint in my cousin's car one time. He told them he'd never seen it before. The cops also found a bag of weed in his glove box. Said he'd never seen that before either. I think they put it there on purpose when he wasn't looking. That kind of shit happens all the time." She took a lighter from her purse. "You don't talk much," she said. She blocked the wind to light her cigarette and blew smoke away from Lloyd. "You want a date?"

"I'll pass," said Lloyd.

"You gay?"

"No."

"Are you sick in the head?"

"No."

"Are you sick in the ass?"

Lloyd stopped on the broken sidewalk littered with fast food wrappers and discarded cigarettes. "Do your parents know you're out here trying to pick up strangers?"

"What are you, some kind of Boy Scout? How young do I look to you?"

Lloyd stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Too young to be out here alone."

"I'm clean, and I ain't never touched a needle."

"Go home," Lloyd urged her as a stranger with a smash-nose face inside a hooded sweatshirt approached from a black Escalade with spinning rims.

"There a problem here?" the man asked Lloyd in a deep, resonating voice. He gave Lloyd the once-over with fierce, deep-set eyes that almost glowed beneath his hood.

"We're cool," said Lloyd. He turned to follow the arriving bus. "I don't want any trouble," he spoke over his shoulder. He looked directly at the girl and said, "Get on the bus."

"Look here," the hooded stranger challenged Lloyd. "I run a business. This here's my merchandise. You touch it, you buy it."

Lloyd watched the group board the bus. "Not tonight."

The stranger pulled a butterfly knife from his sweatshirt pocket and flashed the blade. "Give up the wallet, motherfucker."

Lloyd touched his back pocket. "I must have left it at home."

The stranger pressed the scalpel-sharp blade to Lloyd's throat. "Are you trippin? Give up the wallet or give up your life."

"You're the boss," Lloyd acknowledged, his heart rate barely higher than his standing pulse. In less time than it took to sneeze, Lloyd disarmed his opponent and barked his heel against the taller man's shin, prompting his attacker to hunch forward. In the same instant, Lloyd yanked the man's head down and smashed his grill against a rising knee, knocking him out cold.