He turned around, a puzzled look on his face. One foot had already started to climb the machine, but he stepped back down.
“What do you mean?” he asked me.
“Just what it sounds like,” I continued. “Those jars you put your honey in—are any of them missing?”
He slowly walked back to where we were standing.
“What does that have to do with any of this?” Suddenly he was more interested in what we had to say.
“Just answer the lady’s question, Cameron,” Marty demanded.
“Not missing, but I did find one of my jars busted the other day. I can’t figure out for the life of me how the hell it got out in the woods. What does my honey have to do with anything?”
“Where is it now?” Marty asked.
“What?” Cameron asked.
“The jar!” Marty was getting increasingly impatient.
“I threw it out in the garbage. It was broken in a dozen pieces. I picked up the pieces with some cardboard and tossed them out. I didn’t want anyone to step on it. What gives?”
I suddenly got excited. If we had the jar, we might be able to salvage some prints.
“Where’s your garbage, Cameron?” I asked, as I started to walk toward the cottage.
“They collected this morning,” he informed us, causing me to stop in my tracks.
Once again, we hit a dead end. Totally frustrated, I got back in the car and waited for Marty to join me. I stuck my head out the window and called Cameron’s name. I pointed at him.
“Just don’t disappear, Knox… do you catch my meaning?” I told him, leaving my finger in midair.
“Yeah, I do, detective. I got no reason to leave, and every reason to stay. This crap is going to blow over, and Katie and I are going to be together. I can tell you this, lady, I didn’t kill those girls, and neither did Katie,” he said as he turned and walked away.
***
“What do you make of that?” I asked Marty. I wasn’t quite sure I believed the guy, but I did think that the surprised look on his face when I brought up the honey jar was genuine. “Do you buy his story?”
Marty didn’t answer, but I could tell he was pondering the question.
It had been unusually warm for early June. As we got back on the highway, I noticed in the distance the sky had darkened and a bolt of lightning lit up the horizon. It was as if summer had arrived, and spring never had a chance.
As we got closer to the darkened clouds, the sky opened up and large drops of rain suddenly pelted the windshield. He turned on the wipers. The sound of the wiper motor almost lulled me into something I hadn’t felt in a while—relaxation.
I glanced down at the clock on the console. We had another hour and a half before I had to pick up Bethany at school, and then we were going to head over to Tiffany Bennett’s for another interview.
“Hey, you feel like grabbing something to eat at the Lion’s Den? I could go for their shepherd’s pie.”
He didn’t answer me. I began to think the rain and the wipers were so loud he couldn’t hear me. I repeated myself.
“Hey, Marty, do you want to grab something to eat? I’m famished.”
Silence permeated the air. He had given me no answer.
“Hey, earth to Marty, you in there?” I asked, as I tapped him on the shoulder.
It seemed to bring him back from wherever he had gone.
“Oh, sorry Jean, what did you say? Yeah, food… Lion’s Den is fine.” He had heard me, but he had gone into another zone. He was there in body, but not in mind.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “You seem a bit off today.”
He bit down on his lip. I got the distinct feeling he was contemplating whether or not he was going to confide in me.
“Hey, if it’s none of my business, I’ll butt out, but if it’s something I can help you with…” I began.
He started to tap on the steering wheel as if he was typing on a keyboard. “I asked Hope to marry me last night…” He bit down on his lip a little harder now. I was afraid he was going to draw blood.
I was surprised by the expression on his face.
“She said no?” I asked, astonished. I never would have predicted that. I knew that Hope was very gun shy, but I knew without a doubt that she was deeply in love with him.
“Not really. It wasn’t exactly a ‘no,’ but it certainly wasn’t a ‘yes.’ Damn, I forgot. Do me a favor, there’s a business card in the glove compartment, a Dr. Sears. Can you…” He pulled his cell phone out. “Can you dial that number for me? I need to make an appointment for a neurologist for the Captain.”
I did what he asked and then waited until he completed his call before I asked him what was going on.
“He has to wait two weeks before he can get in. Whatever happened to the good old days, when you could call the doctor and get in the next day?” he complained.
“What’s wrong with the Captain?” I asked. “What does he need to see a neurologist for?” Now I was concerned. I could tell that something had been bothering Marty all day, and now I wondered if it was more than his proposal to Hope.
The rain was coming down now in sheets and the visibility was near zero.
“We aren’t sure. It’s just that he’s been a little off lately. Misplacing things, forgetting things. Just off, that’s all.” He tried to shrug it off, but Marty would never be able to excel in the game of poker. His face was a road map to his emotions, and his eyes were definitely on the road to the town of worry.
He scratched his forehead before he elaborated.
“Something’s just not right. He tore the kitchen apart the other day looking for the can opener, and it was right in front of him, where it always is. He thought his wallet was stolen the other day… canceled his credit cards and everything. The next day I found the wallet in the freezer, sitting right up front, atop of a box of peas.”
He stopped as if he suddenly remembered something else. “He’s been getting names mixed up. He called Justin’s wife by my sister’s name, which in itself would be no big deal, but…
“And the other day he called me Tommy. He never, ever, has called me by my twin brother’s name. He has always been able to tell us apart. He has never once mixed us up.”
It was as if he was trying to take inventory of all of the instances of confusion the Captain had displayed.
I didn’t want to blow it off and make it sound like it was nothing to be concerned about, because I knew all too well it could be something. My own mother suffered from Alzheimer’s and I had watched the woman that I loved and admired slowly turn into someone that I didn’t recognize.
People tend to think that the tragedy of the illness is that the patient doesn’t recognize the family, but there is another component to it as well. The family doesn’t recognize the patient, either. It makes it hard to care for a person you don’t even know, someone who has turned into a virtual stranger.
My children loved my mother, adored her even, but after a while, they became frightened of her. Even though I knew better, I became resentful of the woman that she had become.
I didn’t know if Marty knew about my mother’s disease, and I chose not to tell him about it at the moment.
“It could be just stress, Marty.” I gave him the typical response, hoping it turned out to be the correct one, even though I knew that, more than likely, the symptoms the Captain was exhibiting were probably caused by a more sinister component than stress.
By his answer, I knew that Marty was well aware of that.
“Jean, that man has no stress. He is the happiest he has been in years. He has no money problems, his kids are grown and out of the house—well, most of them,” he corrected himself. “He lives a stress-free life… soap operas during the day and poker with my uncles three nights a week.” He unwrapped a stick of gum and offered me one. I turned him down.
“The Captain watches soap operas?” I asked him, flabbergasted at the thought.
“Don’t ever tell him I told you that, he’ll kill me.”
I laughed out loud for the first time in days. It felt absolutely wonderful.
By the time we reached the pub, the rain was starting to slow down. I ran through several puddles before I got to the front door.
I was already starting to smell the shepherd’s pie I was going to order when my cell rang. It was the dispatcher. The pie would have to wait.
The dispatcher explained in detail what the call was about, because she couldn’t believe it herself.
“Call from woman at 129 Meadow Lane. A woman became curious when her two dogs kept barking incessantly in her back yard. After about an hour, she decided to investigate and noticed something behind her neighbor’s flowerbed. It looked odd to her and it piqued her curiosity, so she grabbed her pool net and slid it though her chain-link fence and kept on poking at it, pulling it closer it until she was able to get a close enough look. When she got the suspicious item close enough, she realized it was a complete set of male genitals. She is now being treated by paramedics, and officers Hennessey and Stiskin are at the scene and are requesting your presence.”
***
Ten minutes later, we were pulling up to the crime scene. The street was cordoned off and it seemed like the entire police force had shown up. Media trucks were setting up their equipment and neighbors were starting to congregate in small groups. We had to park quite a distance away and walk in order to get past the crime scene barricades.
We found Officer Hennessey interviewing the woman who made the 911 call. A paramedic was taking her vitals. When Hennessey saw us, he excused himself. I saw him grab something out of his patrol car and then he headed our direction. He was holding up a plastic bag with what looked like some sort of sea creature.
“We found your husband’s balls, detective, mystery solved,” he said with an insane smirk on his face. He had been trying to get back at me ever since I took part in a practical joke that had the guy sweating bullets, thinking he was about to be a father, with eighteen years of child support on the horizon.
I took the bag from him and studied it carefully.
“Sorry, Hennessey, this couldn’t be Glenn’s. He would need a gallon-size bag. This quart-size bag would rule him out completely,” I told him as I handed the bloodied genitals back to him.
“What’s going on?” I asked as we started walking toward the fifties-style ranch home that was surrounded by our SWAT team.
“Suspect is inside, her name is Susan Goldman. She was just apprehended with the murder weapon, a machete, and the husband, Mr. Goldman, is now literally in pieces. Mrs. Goldman started to bury the body parts in the back yard, but the family pet, a really good -looking German shepherd…” he paused. His train of thought seemed to get sidetracked as he reflected on the animal.