Soundkeeper (12 page)

“Counselor, unless you have any other evidence to present, I’m inclined to dismiss the charges,” the judge said to the solicitor.

“I have no other evidence to present.”

“Case dismissed,” the judge said.

“That’s it?” Hall asked the deputy sitting next to him. He just shrugged his shoulders. Hall left the courtroom and tried to find the girl. He knew she had lied. He caught up to her and her parents in the parking lot.

“Miss Wellesley, can I talk to you?” Hall asked.

Her father stopped and turned around, while the girl and her mother kept walking.

“Officer, I heard you’re new around here. My daughter shouldn’t have put herself in that situation. Brandon would have never done the things you said that he did. His father is an important person around here, someone that matters. I don’t want you to talk to my daughter. If you try, I’ll report you to your supervisor,” he said.

The girl lied. Her parents knew it, probably told her to do it. Hire a high-powered attorney, and buy a quick dismissal. He wondered what was at stake.

While he watched them drive away, a sports car pulled up behind him and beeped its horn. The driver, who had just been exonerated of all charges against him, rolled down his window and gave Hall a one-fingered salute.

Hall took off his tie and rolled up his sleeves. When he got to his truck he had to open both doors to let the heat escape before he got behind the wheel. The bad taste in his mouth contrasted sharply with the sweet smell of jasmine from the vines that ringed the municipal parking lot. He was pissed off and disappointed but believed no matter what just happened he had been in the right place at the right time and had done the right thing. He had been alive long enough to realize that money and status seldom protected someone forever.

After the cab of the truck cooled down a little he climbed in and slammed the door. When he reached down to buckle his seat belt he heard a hiss like a snake and his face felt like it was on fire! As he jumped out of the cab of his truck, the seatbelt tangled around one of his arms and in his blindness he fell to his knees, sneezing and coughing at the same time. He felt the snot and mucous pour out of his nose and slide down onto his lips and chin. A strong hand clamped onto his arm and pulled him to his feet.

“Hold on a second, I’ve got some water.”

Hall felt the cool, soothing water splash onto his face and in a few seconds he could make out his rescuer through teary eyes. The tall, black man in a gray uniform told Hall the same thing he’d been told in training.

“Don’t rub your eyes, you’ll make it worse.”

Hall nodded his understanding because he couldn’t yet speak. He turned his face into the feeble breeze, and it seemed to help.

“Thanks,” Hall wheezed when he was able to.

The man he thanked was a full foot taller than Hall was and his shoulders were so wide it looked like he was wearing a lineman’s shoulder pads under his highway patrol uniform.

“Are you gonna be OK?” the trooper asked.

Hall said. “I think so. That was pretty stupid of me.”

The trooper walked away smiling, and Hall looked at the can of oleoresm capsicum on his pistol belt. He must have snagged the seatbelt buckle on the lip of the canister when he tried to buckle it, and sent a burst of the powerful pepper spray straight into his face. The first person he’d ever used force against was himself.

Chapter Twenty

As much as Varnum disliked wearing a coat and tie to work everyday he hated wearing his uniform even more. He had been a detective for twelve years, and it seemed like every time he put on his uniform it fit a little tighter around his waist, and the Kevlar vest was a little smaller. Today was his day off and he was moonlighting, directing traffic at a construction site. The dust from earthmoving equipment stuck to his sweaty face, and there were damp crescents of sweat under his armpits. Next semester’s tuition was due next week, and unless he wanted a very disappointed daughter on his conscience he needed to earn a few extra dollars. After eight hours in the sun he was finished and pulled into the nearest stop-and-rob for a cold drink.

He went into the store, nodded to the clerk and walked past a sign that said “employees only”. After he used the bathroom he opened the door to the cooler and stepped inside. He learned this trick when he was a road deputy, working long hours in the Carolina heat and humidity. From inside the cooler he could look out over the bottles of soda and beer and see who came and went while his core temperature returned to normal. He unbuttoned his shirt, hooked a finger behind the vest at the top of his sternum and pulled it away from his sweaty t-shirt, letting the cold air cool him down. He was getting ready to leave the cooler and buy a bottle of water when he saw someone he recognized walk into the store.

Calvin Jackson Jr. was the first second-generation criminal Varnum had ever arrested. Less than one month out of the academy Varnum was riding with his training officer when they responded to a report of domestic violence. The address was a regular call for service, his trainer had told him, and the Jackson family was good for at least one knock-down-drag-out family fight every month. Varnum worked his first homicide that night and never forgot the sight of a two year old boy in a high chair with his daddy sitting beside him at the kitchen table eating supper when they walked into the small house. Mrs. Jackson was lying on the kitchen floor with a steak knife buried in her chest. “DRT” his training officer said later, “Dead Right There”.

Fourteen years later Varnum worked his first case as a detective, a sixteen-year-old kid that had been caught driving a stolen car. He went into the interview room and couldn’t get the suspect to admit to anything. When he read the name on the arrest sheet he remembered. The only thing that surprised him more was when the boy’s father came to pick him up at the station. Dad had served ten years of a twenty-year sentence for second degree murder and was living with his son in the same house where he’d killed his wife.

Calvin Jackson Jr. was stoned out of his mind. He walked like he had a spring in his left Air Jordan and a five pound weight in his right one. Varnum watched as his eyes swept the store lingering at each surveillance camera, judging their coverage areas. He opened the cooler door in front of Varnum, grabbed a thirty-two ounce bottle of malt liquor and shoved it down the front of his baggy shorts. Then he went to the register, bought a single cigar, and walked outside. He was pulling all of the tobacco out of the cigar when Varnum walked up to him.

“Are you so stoned that you didn’t see my car, Mr. Jackson?”

Calvin didn’t recognize the detective and didn’t like the fact that this cop knew his name. He started to walk away.

“You’re under arrest,” Varnum said and grabbed his arm. Calvin Jackson pulled away from him which Varnum had anticipated. Using his momentum against him Varnum shoved him and kicked his legs out from underneath him at the same time. He landed on top of his arrestee and was putting the handcuffs on him when Calvin started screaming.

“Calm down, nobody’s going to hurt you.” But the young man kept screaming and was trying to buck Varnum off of him.

Varnum rolled him on his side and started searching him. In one of his pants pocket was a small bag of weed. Varnum tossed it onto the hood of his car and rolled him onto his other side. He found a lighter and some change in his other pocket and pulled everything out. There was blood on his hand when he pulled it out of the pocket.

“Shit.”

He left his prisoner screaming on the hot asphalt and unlocked his unmarked police car. There was a bottle of hand sanitizer in his glove box and he used half of it to clean his hands. Then he called for an ambulance and a marked patrol car to transport his arrestee to the jail.

Calvin had rolled over and was sitting up. Varnum grabbed his shoulder and told him to stand up.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Varnum asked.

“I’m hurt man, down there.” There were tears in his eyes when he spoke.

Varnum saw the dark stain at his crotch and remembered the bottle of beer. He pulled on the waistband of the shorts and looked down. Calvin’s boxer shorts were a mixture of broken glass, beer and blood.

“I think you cut your dick off,” Varnum said.

Calvin’s legs gave out on him and he fell back down on the ground.

When two other deputies and the paramedics arrived they took the handcuffs off of Calvin and used two pair of heavy-duty nylon straps to secure him to the gurney. Then the medics cut off his shorts.

Three cops, the convenience store clerk and two paramedics all said “ooooohhhh” at the same time and turned away from the spectacle. Calvin’s manhood was attached to the rest of his body by the smallest thread of flesh. He stopped screaming when he saw everyone’s reaction.

“What? What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing at all,” one of the medics said. “You’re gonna be fine. If you got any condoms stashed away you can give them to your friends. You ain’t gonna need them anymore.”

Calvin was still screaming when they loaded him in the back of the ambulance.

Varnum was just thinking that there might not be a Calvin Jackson III when he saw a black Trans Am cruise by. A white guy with blond, almost white hair was driving it. He told one of the deputies that he needed to find out who was driving that car, and the two marked cars pulled the Trans Am over a few blocks away. They checked the driver’s license and insurance and confirmed that the tag belonged on the car and then turned the driver loose. They came back to the convenience store and gave the information to Varnum.

“He’s headed to the emergency room. Got a nasty looking cut on his leg. He said his knife slipped when he was cleaning some fish but it sure looked like somebody sliced him,” the deputy said.

The name of the driver of the Trans Am was the same guy he had started a file on the day before, the parolee. Varnum thanked the deputies for their help and drove to his office instead of going home. It wasn’t like anyone was waiting for him to come home anyway. When an arrestee was hospitalized there was a lot of paperwork to complete. Varnum took off his uniform shirt and bullet proof vest and hung them over the back of his chair. Before he started his report, he logged on the computer and checked his account and saw that he had three more views but no private messages. Maybe he needed to put a different picture on his profile. He decided that was too much trouble and got back to work.

Chapter Twenty One

The blow stung, and the sound of it rang through the fishouse. Blood dribbled onto the dirty wooden floor, but the victim offered no defense.

“You can go just as easy as that bitch did, Arnold,” Blondie threatened. “All I have to do is toss you over and watch you sink like a rock.”

Arnold did not know how to swim and it was his misfortune that Blondie knew that. The simple act of pretending to push him over the side brought the man to his knees. Although physically smaller and weaker than Arnold, Blondie intimidated his partner with ease, just like how he kept milking Mark Lancaster for more and more money.

All Arnold had done to cause the assault and death threat was report that the part needed to fix the stubborn hydraulic system was unavailable until the following day. It wasn’t his fault, but Blondie didn’t care. Blondie didn’t really care that the boat couldn’t be fixed for another day. He was just an asshole who liked to hurt people.

Ever since they had met in prison Blondie had been the boss, and Arnold preferred it that way. Someone to line up the jobs, someone to collect the money, someone to turn in if he got caught. Blondie needed Arnold to fix the boat and drive it, and Arnold needed the money. Blondie planned to dump his partner, literally, as soon as his usefulness expired.

Risking a glance at the closet, Arnold hoped Blondie wasn’t going to stay overnight. Suddenly the blood was pounding in his ears. Blondie had been asleep when he got back from Beaufort. What if the girl had escaped while he was gone? The police would be here very soon if that had happened, he knew. If she escaped he hoped that Blondie did stay. Otherwise, he would take the rap for kidnapping and attempted murder all alone.

The tension built for thirty minutes. It climaxed when Arnold heard the sound of a boat motor. Risking a look out of the window, he saw two men in a camouflaged jon boat spreading a net across the creek. He and Blondie went outside and watched the men work until the mosquitoes drove them back into the fishouse.

“I’m getting the hell out of here. I’ll pick up the hose in the morning on my way out here.” Blondie left in his Trans Am.

As soon as the car was out of sight Arnold rushed to the closet. Gale shielded her eyes from the flashlight, and Arnold let out a great sigh of relief.

“I thought you’d gotten away,” he said.

Gale didn’t respond. When her eyes adjusted she noticed the way that the filthy man was looking at her.

“You’ll have to kill me first,” Gale croaked. Her throat was dry, and her voice was convincing.

Arnold remembered the men with the fishing nets were close enough to hear a woman scream.

“I’m not going to do anything to you,” he said.

“Why don’t you let me go?”

“I can’t. Not until we’re finished. Then I’ll leave and call the police and tell them where to find you,” Arnold said.