Authors: Karin Salvalaggio
Jared eases his EMT response kit to the ground. When he stands again he raises his arms up high and nods at Carson to get him to do the same. All the while Jared is looking over the man’s shoulder back at the trailer, scanning for more threats or someone hurt. The kids are still wailing but no one else has followed the man out into the yard.
The hand with the gun jumps around, pointing first at Jared and then at Carson. The man doesn’t seem to notice the cold. His bare feet are blue-veined and dirty black against the snow-covered sidewalk. His eyes dart around and his mouth looks like it’s working hard to form words but as yet nothing has come out. For a moment it appears that he’s forgotten he’s got a gun in his hand before he once again points it at Carson.
Jared clears his throat. He’s spotted a gray-haired neighbor with a rifle trained on them, and the last thing he wants to happen is for him and Carson to get caught in the crossfire. He clears his throat a second time and the man in front of them shifts the gun in Jared’s direction. It’s then that Jared can see that it’s standard police issue. Jared cocks his head to the side, gesturing to the mobile home.
“Those your kids in there?”
The question confuses the man. He blinks a few times and his dark eyes shift back to the house from which he’s just escaped. He takes the time to dig wax out of his ear with his index finger before answering.
He stutters when he speaks. “Yeah, they’re mine … That trailer is mine.” He points the gun at the pickup truck trapped in the covered driveway beyond the sheriff’s patrol car. He starts laughing but it doesn’t sound like he’s happy. “And that’s my truck too.”
Jared pretends to admire it. “Nice truck.”
The man is near tears. “Damn nice truck. All paid for too.”
“You got a name?”
“Brady,” he says, low and polite. “Brady Monroe.”
“Well, Brady Monroe, you should know we’re paramedics.”
Brady scowls. “Course I know that. I ain’t stupid.”
Jared backtracks slowly, though he wants to sprint. “Nobody’s saying that you’re stupid. It’s just that me and my buddy Carson ain’t got no guns. We’re just here to help.” Jared looks down at Brady’s shirt. “You’ve got blood on you. You hurt?”
Brady rubs his left hand across his T-shirt like he’s trying to hide the stains. He shakes his head.
Jared directs his gaze at the trailer again. “If you’re not hurt, then maybe there’s someone inside that could use our help. Like I said before, we’re just here to help.”
Brady sweeps his gun from Jared to Carson. “You can go in,” he says to Carson, before training the weapon on Jared again. “But you’re staying here.”
Jared decides Carson is about to pass out. He does his best to speak to his friend as calmly as he can but he knows he’s not fooling anyone. “You go on in and see what you can do. We’ll just stay right here and talk some more.” He tilts his chin toward his breast pocket and tries to catch Brady’s eye. “Mind if I smoke?”
The man is watching Carson so Jared keeps quiet until the door to the mobile home closes. He has mixed feelings about having Brady’s attention again.
Jared asks once more. “Mind if I smoke?”
“I’d rather you didn’t. Secondhand smoke’s a killer. Sets me to coughing.” He holds his gun up higher and starts crying. “Been after my wife to quit.”
Jared can hear the sounds of police sirens in the distance. “You hear that?”
Brady casts his eyes about like he’s trying to find an exit, but comes up empty. “Reckon they’re coming for me.”
Jared purses his lips. “Got anything you want to say?”
“I didn’t do what she’s said I did.”
Jared already thinks he knows who
she
is but he asks anyway. “Who’s she?”
Brady gestures toward the trailer. The children have stopped crying. “My wife.” He holds the gun with one hand and runs his fingers through his greasy hair. He’s bone thin and his scraggly beard is peppered with gray. The gun is by his side pointing at the ground and the man is shifting his weight from foot to foot. “It’s cold out here.”
“Damn cold.”
Brady Monroe regains focus. “She’s saying that I did it. That I killed Leanne Adams.”
Jared doesn’t know quite what to say to that. He hesitates, picking out little movements in the distance. The police and armed neighbors have surrounded the trailer. He knows there are guns trained on them from everywhere. He thinks there might be a dead cop inside the trailer and that everybody with a radio knows about it. Brady Monroe is as good as roadkill, and he might be too if things don’t go well.
Out of ideas, Jared asks the obvious question. “Well, did you kill her?”
Several times Brady opens his mouth to speak but nothing comes out. All Jared can see is bad dental work and a cyst the size of a marble on the man’s tongue. Brady yells so he can be heard from quite a distance. “Hell, no, I did not kill that woman.” He points the gun at the trailer. “That bitch in there wants the kids, the trailer, and my truck. She wants everything.” His voice trails off. “Well she ain’t gonna get none of it now.”
Jared fails to swallow with his bone-dry throat. “So why don’t you tell me your side of the story?”
Brady levels the gun at Jared again. There are tears streaming out of his eyes. They dampen his pockmarked cheeks, catching in shallow craters that glisten like tiny silver coins on his leathery skin.
Jared tries to speak again but he stutters over simple words. His legs may buckle beneath him any minute. There are little sounds and movements all around them—the cocking of rifles and the low crackle of radios. In the distance he picks up the thumping of helicopter blades coming from the direction of the hospital. He’s hoping it’s not a ride he’ll need to take.
A foamed outline of spittle forms around Brady’s dry lips. He licks them with a papery tongue and Jared imagines the scraping of sandpaper on flesh. Brady looks as if he’s trying hard to work out his thoughts so he can make himself better understood.
“That’s the thing,” Brady says, laughing and crying all at once. “I lose the kids either way. I lose everything no matter what. That bitch knew she had me. I bet she was smiling like a pig in shit when she called the police.”
“That bad?”
Brady nods and bites into the fleshy part of his thumb pad. His nails are broken and black. He leans in and Jared fights the desire to lean away from the stench coming off him.
“You see, me and a couple of guys got a lab out near where Leanne died. I was working there that whole day.” He looks around and gasps like he’s only just realized what has brought him to this point. “I can’t go telling the cops that. Now, can I?”
Jared can see the problem clear enough. He tries hard to breathe, think, and force out words in a logical order all at the same time. “This is the time to make things right. The past is past. You need to figure out how to move forward with what you’ve got.”
Brady isn’t listening. He wipes his nose across his shoulder. “I can’t believe Leanne was stupid enough to show her face around here again. Damn near ruined everything, as far as I can tell. After what she did there was no way he was gonna let her live. No way at all. Taking all that money. Crazy bitch.”
“I’m worried about your kids,” says Jared, trying again to make headway. “They need to know that it wasn’t you that killed her. You need to put down the gun so we can go talk to them.”
Brady seems to see the sense of this and for a few seconds the gun stops jumping up and down. “I still have nightmares about those girls we brought over here. Especially the young ones. It wasn’t right what we did. But I wasn’t like the others. I swear I never did what they did. Never. It’s important that my kids know that too.”
Jared lowers his voice. This isn’t what he was expecting to hear. “What girls are you talking about, Brady?”
Brady raises the gun to his mouth and shoves the barrel deep into his throat using both his hands. Tufts of coarse black hairs line the backs of Brady’s fingers, the hairs blunt and thick like they’ve grown back after being shaven or burnt. Brady’s hands and forearms are lined with deep blue veins. His nostrils tilt upward and inflate like tiny inner tubes. He muffles his words into the gun’s barrel. Greasy tears stream down his cheeks and he repeats himself several times, growing more desperate with each pass, but Jared cannot understand a word he’s saying. Jared says
pardon me
several times, leaning in because he really means it. Jared wants Brady to keep talking. He wants to understand.
Brady pulls the trigger and they both collapse onto the snow. Jared lays there feeling like he used to after a week of football tryouts in high school. Everything hurts. He opens his eyes but keeps them locked on the sky. It feels like a train is thundering through his head. He imagines the cops and their fast-approaching footsteps but the gunshot’s echo and a thick layer of snow muffle the sound. Above him heads bob in and out of view. They’re all saying the right sort of things but Jared can’t be bothered to listen anymore. The man who introduced himself as Brady Monroe is startlingly silent but his kids are screaming again. People will tell them lies just to quiet them down. They’ll say everything is going to be fine when nothing is fine anymore. Something about Collier is broken and can’t be fixed. It’s not their fault; it’s just the way things are now. He wonders if he should tell Brady’s kids the truth—that he couldn’t hear their daddy’s last words. Above him the sky is white going to gray but all he can see is the splatter of blood and brain and bone.
14
Macy’s truck bounces along the deep ruts cut into the frozen surface of the narrow country road. Hidden among the trees, the house is only a few minutes’ drive from Route 93. She parks among the other sheriff’s patrol cars that line the soft shoulder, getting as close to the little house as she dares. The residence looks harmless enough, but when she climbs out of the truck she gets her first whiff of the madness coming her way. The stench of cat urine is overpowering. She’s visited enough meth labs to recognize it immediately. Anhydrous ammonia, an ingredient more commonly found in fertilizer, is also used in methamphetamine production. It’s not only toxic, it’s highly explosive. In the distance she can see a crew suited in protective gear going in and out of what’s left of the house.
It didn’t take long to track down Brady Monroe’s meth lab. The home had once belonged to his uncle, but Brady has been paying the utility bills for the past fifteen years. As far as the county knows it’s been unoccupied all that time. A neighbor reported the fire before the sheriff’s office had time to organize a raid. Other than smoke stains haloing the front windows and the charred timber beams of the exposed roof, the modest one-story bungalow looks untouched, but according to what she’s heard on the radio, an entire wall of the kitchen has blown out into the backyard. Macy swears under her breath. Given the amount of fire damage, there might not be much evidence left for them to process.
Macy starts up the driveway. Someone has snapped a length of chain that once secured the gate. The broken pieces lie in the snow next to a sign telling those who cross to beware of dogs. There are other signs nailed to the trees. The homemade warnings are as riddled with misspellings as they are bullet holes. She takes a few steps and stops to look down in the snow. The dogs appear to be sleeping. She nudges the closest one with her foot. There’s some movement. It’s not been dead too long. It’s not had time to freeze.
She hears Warren’s voice but she doesn’t look up to greet him. “They’ve both been shot,” he says, clearing his throat.
“By us?”
“Nah, they were dead when the fire crew arrived.” He points to the scars running along the flanks of the one closest to the path. “These dogs have been trained to fight. They would have attacked anyone who came too close to the house.”
“So whoever did this didn’t know the dogs well enough to get past them?”
“Who knows? Maybe Brady did all this before going home to shoot his wife.”
“The timing isn’t right. The fire was reported after the suicide. What have you found so far?”
He takes a deep breath. “So far it’s your typical meth lab. We find at least one a day in this part of the state.”
“This wasn’t an accident.”
“Probably not, but we’ll know more after forensics takes a look.”
“Did you find anything in Brady’s trailer?”
“A black ski mask was on the seat of his truck.”
“He was at the hospital last night?”
“I have no doubt it was him. He shot himself with Gareth’s gun.”
Macy glances down the road and counts three news vans. Camera crews are setting up on the opposite side of the road. “It’s getting a little crowded.”
“Brady shot a cop.”
“Colin, right? How’s he doing?”
“It looks like he’s going to pull through. How is Jared? I understand you’ve known each other for some time. It’s good that you were there for him.”
Macy frowns. She’d arrived at the trailer park just in time to see Brady Monroe pull the trigger. “To tell you the truth, I’m a little worried about Jared. He didn’t seem himself.”
“Well, he’s had a shock. It’s to be expected.”
Macy blinks back tears. During the ride to the hospital she’d held Jared’s hand. It was hot like bread pulled from the oven.
Warren turns away and coughs into a clenched fist. “So, do you think Jared told us everything?”
“I think he repeated the conversation he had with Brady word for word.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were investigating the sex trafficking case all along?”
“I wasn’t sure if Leanne’s murder had anything to do with it until this morning. Brady’s conversation with Jared changes everything.”
“Did you know Brady worked for Cross Border Trucking until he lost his commercial license seven years ago?”
Macy holds up her phone. “I just spoke to the guys in Helena. Brady’s name did come up in the original case but we didn’t have any documentation to prove his involvement.” She points to the house. “I hope we’ll find something more concrete to link the two cases this afternoon. Brady’s last words aren’t going to be enough.”
“You’re going to need to suit up if you want to go inside.” He stands back, getting the measure of her. “I’m sure we can find something that will fit you.”