I decided to evade. The more things change... “What do you guys talk about on a date?”
She smiled. “We don’t talk, JP. We’re at that great stage of the relationship where it’s just
sex, sex, sex.”
I suddenly understood the term “acid reflux.”
Our arrival saved me a response. Gwen turned off her lights as we drove up Evergreen Street. We then came upon a long, sloping gravel driveway.
She stopped the car in the middle of the dark, lonely road and explained the battle plan. “About fifty feet down the driveway it splits like a fork. The left leads to Kyle’s house, but we will take the right to his neighbors’ home, the Walkers. They are on vacation, so we will park at their house and walk through the wooded area separating the homes”
We continued down the driveway—the only sound coming from the small rocks being kicked up by the van’s tires.
When we arrived at the Walkers’, Gwen parked the car and hastily searched the backseat. She cursed herself for leaving her jacket in Jones’ car when he’d brought her to the restaurant. I had driven the van to Hastings. We stepped out into the night, feeling the cool chill of autumn. I offered her my jacket, but she refused, proving we still had enough stubborn pride between us to fill a small country.
I leaned on my cane, trying to catch my breath. I looked at Gwen. Actually, I hadn’t stopped looking at her. “I can’t believe he went for the bait.”
She looked at me with surprise. “What do you mean you can’t believe it? You said you were a hundred percent certain.”
“I was, but I didn’t factor in you wearing that dress.”
She blushed, but recovered to remind me, “That’s nice of you to say, JP. It’s one of my favorites—Stephen bought it for me for my birthday one year.”
Suddenly I found the dress less appealing. With no time to waste, we moved into the wooded area. Gwen took the lead, knocking away thin tree branches that were camouflaged by the dark night.
I watched her glide through the light forest—no small feat in stilettos—gracefully moving tree limbs out of the way. She bounced over an embankment, but then disappeared like a trap door had opened beneath her.
I ran as fast as my injured leg would allow. When I arrived at the top of the embankment, I looked down to see that Gwen had gone “ass over tea kettle” into a patch of poison ivy. My fright dissipated and I began to laugh.
“Shut up!”
“I didn’t say anything,” I said with a guilty smile, and reached out my hand to her.
She refused, choosing to struggle to her feet. She almost regained balance when her shoes slipped again on the wet ivy. I instinctively reached out and caught her.
It felt like no time had passed since the last time I’d held her in my arms. I remembered it vividly—it took place in the small closet on the Upper West Side that Gwen referred to as her apartment, after I’d returned from Bosnia. This is where I had longed to be since that day.
“Thanks,” Gwen said in a hushed tone, and pulled away. Just like that, the moment faded sadly away. “We better hurry,” she urged.
You wait for a moment for fifteen years and it only lasts five seconds. But that’s life in a nutshell—a few monumental moments, surrounded by a lot of mundane time where we wait for the next fleeting moment of grandeur.
I placed my suit jacket over her bare shoulders. This time she didn’t fight me.
We evaded one last branch and arrived at a manicured lawn that led to the back of Jones’ abode. It was a modest one-story, ranch-style house. All lights were off and it appeared deserted. It seemed like a place where a large attack dog would let out an angry stream of barking at intruders, but none did.
Gwen moved to a screened-in porch area. Just outside of it was a barbecue, which she frisked through, only to come up empty. “Dammit!”
“What is it?”
“I talked to a girl named Holly who briefly dated Kyle. She works at the bowling alley here in Rockfield. It never got serious, but she did come here on a couple of occasions and told me the extra key was hidden in the barbecue.”
“Did she give you any inside information on Jones?”
“According to her, he was weird.”
“That’s not a real scoop.”
“Agreed. A real scoop would be finding a way in.”
“When I get in a tight spot, I think of what Carter would do and then I scale it down to something I’ll get less years in prison for.”
“Breaking and entering into a police officer’s house is going to get us locked up for a long time, either way.”
She had a point, but I’d made a career of tuning out the voice of reason, and this time would be no different. My eyes adjusted to the dark as I searched for an opening.
“So what would Carter do?” she asked.
“He would set an explosive device on that window over there,” I said, pointing at the window closest to the screened-in porch.
“Your friend is a piece of work.”
“He’s the most loyal man I know. He’d die for me.”
“If he doesn’t kill you first. What’s the scaled down version?”
“See that window? I think it’s cracked open just enough that one of us could fit through.”
Gwen volunteered. “Give me a boost and I think I can get in.”
“I was thinking about going.”
“I’m younger than you, JP. This is not a job for a decrepit old man.”
“Only by six months, three days, and four hours.”
She smiled. “I’m impressed … but I’m still going.”
There was no time to argue. And pride aside, she was likely the only one of us who would fit. I anchored myself with my cane and after removing her shoes, Gwen climbed on my shoulders. I boosted her up and she tried to squeeze through the window.
She was three-quarters of the way in as I held tightly to her ankles. She slithered a little more and I started to lose my grip. I held on as tightly as possible, but it was no use. She broke away from my grip and disappeared through the window with a scream, followed by a loud thud. Then everything went silent.
The silence was frightening. I had no idea how far the drop was, or if the paranoid Jones had some type of booby trap set up. I visualized an oversized bear trap with sharp metal claws.
“Gwen? Gwen? Are you okay?” I shouted in my loudest whisper.
No response.
My stomach sank.
“Gwen!”
Chapter 47
An hour went by.
It was actually more like a minute, but it seemed like an hour. I started to panic. I had to get in. Calling 911 wasn’t exactly an option.
But suddenly around the corner of the house, Gwen appeared like an angel. She looked unscathed, and said, “I opened the front door, let’s go.”
She wore gloves and provided me a pair. I had no idea where she stored them in that dress. I handed her the shoes that she’d removed.
“Are you okay?” I asked with concern.
“No thanks to you dropping me, I am.”
I followed her around to the front entrance. The place was cold and sterile, I thought as we entered, and the only detectable odor came from the recent use of a fireplace.
We entered the living room. It contained two chairs and a couch. A small coffee table sat empty in front of the couch. No magazines, notes, junk, or anything. It was as bland as Kyle Jones’ physical appearance.
“Look what you’ve been missing out on,” I remarked.
“A little too clean for my taste.”
“A little too clean is making me suspicious.”
“JP, we already are suspicious. That’s why we broke into his house. We need to find something that connects him to Noah’s death.”
I walked a circle from living room to dining room, through the kitchen and back to the living room. I checked for cameras, listening devices, and anything that someone like Jones might put in his house because he was paranoid. A handy news-industry survival skill that I had picked up over the years.
I found nothing.
Gwen headed down a hallway, stopping to look at photographs hanging on the wall. “Do you find it odd, JP, that every picture and memento he has is related to his time in Rockfield. No old friends, family—it’s as if his life started the day he arrived here.”
“Not really,” I said. “He’s an only child who moved around, so he likely doesn’t have a lot of longstanding relationships. And as far as his parents, he probably doesn’t want a daily reminder of their death. We haven’t found any cracks in his timeline—he had a good record in the military, his boss in Arizona thinks he’s the Second Coming, and if he had something to hide in North Carolina, then why did he keep his house there?”
She nodded, but my words didn’t seem to convince her, so I stole Murray’s theory, “I think he might be running toward something, not away from it.”
I entered the first bedroom on the right. It was neat and antiseptic, just like all the other rooms. A single bed, a laptop computer sitting on a light colored, wooden desk, and a twenty-inch television in front of the bed.
Gwen followed me in, and went directly to his closet—dry-cleaned police uniforms on one side, casual wear like jeans, flannel shirts, and sweaters on the other. On the floor, hidden behind a folded ironing-board and a pile of heavy winter sweaters, were three cardboard boxes. Gwen knelt down and began going through them as I looked on.
It contained the history Gwen sought. A lot of awards and certificates dating back to Little League, including those noting his military and police achievements. He was so anal that he actually saved his schoolwork from the many schools he’d attended, spanning the globe from Germany to San Diego to Kentucky. Nothing incriminating.
Gwen appeared to discover something and summoned me over. She handed me a copy of the picture of Jones’ parents. I took a close look at them—they appeared to be out on a houseboat at some unidentified lake. “I told you he doesn’t want to deal with it every day. Those memories are best kept in a box in the closet.”
Gwen handed me more photos. They were from the Air Force days. Most were group shots—a bunch of cocky Top Gun wannabe pilots hamming for the camera. It made the military seem more like spring break than the blood and guts of war that I had witnessed firsthand.
She handed me more shots of Jones, posing in his Gilbert, Arizona police uniform, along with some assorted ones from his time in North Carolina, proudly standing by a small airplane.
Gwen continued to dig, finding a photo titled “Batman & Robin.” This was another Air Force photo, but this one was specifically of Jones and another man. The photo was signed:
Batman & Robin—Wingmen Forever!
It was dated January 28, 1991. She handed them to me.
Both men, dressed in their sand-colored flight suits, were young, vibrant, and didn’t seem to have a care in the world. They stood beside their aircraft, arms draped around each other, either about to embark on another successful mission, or perhaps just victoriously returning from one. Jones seemed to be having a more difficult time with the desert sun, his skin was blotched and blistered, while his buddy had a bronze tan.
“Do you think you can find out who this wingman guy is? He might know something about Kyle that we’re missing.”
“The only military contacts I have left are the kind who would like to use me for target practice. Maybe Carter can help with that. He’s like a cult hero with the troops.”
Gwen quickly changed the subject, handing me another photo. “Check this out.”
I studied a photo of Jones standing beside an attractive girl with curly dark hair. It was titled:
Lucy’s 30th
. “I’m guessing this is the Lucy that the police chief in Gilbert mentioned. And I must say, for a strange anal-retentive murderer, he does pretty well with the ladies.”
I’d love to have a conversation with this Lucy, but without a last name, and only a photo, she’d be difficult to locate. I looked for a copy machine, but couldn’t locate one. It would be too risky to take the photo, so I took a picture of it with my phone. It would have to do. I did the same with the photo of
Batman & Robin
.
We knew we didn’t have much time left, so we did one final sweep.
In his desk I found the usual identification markers, such as his social security card and his pilot license from both North Carolina and Connecticut. Unfortunately, there was no diary where he confessed to killing my brother. Gwen found a pile of old VHS tapes with my name marked on them in magic marker, and according to the label, they contained some of my most famous stories for GNZ. Looks like he was returning the favor by doing a little research on me.
All interesting finds, but nothing worth risking a long prison term for. “Hurry and put that stuff back, Gwen, I want to check out the basement before we go.”
Chapter 48
We cautiously descended the steps. My leg began to flare up with pain and I lagged behind. When I got to the bottom, I thought I’d walked into a Batman convention. Gadgets, posters, dolls.
“Holy freak show, Batman,” I said, upon the bizarre discovery.
“Can you shed any light on this?” Gwen asked.
“I think he might like Batman,” I said, feeling nostalgic. “I remember watching the Batman television show with you and we had to have my mom come in the room to read all the words that flashed on the screen during the climactic fight scenes.
POW, BAM, KABOOM
.”
Gwen smiled. “If I remember correctly, I learned to read before you and put a stop to that.”
“Are you ever not competitive?”
“I can’t believe you’re talking.”
She wandered to the wall and read out loud the inscription on it. It was a poem, entitled
Batman: The Dark Knight
.
Gwen turned back to me. “What do you make of this?”
I looked at my watch in a subtle nudge to hurry this along. “Not sure, other than it sure isn’t
Keats
.”
I read the words on the wall one more time.
He battles crime, his victims bleed
stuck with me. I thought of Noah. I filed the poem away in the back of my mind, just as my cell phone startled us.
“I just left the police station. And so did Jones, so you might want to think about getting out of there.”