Swan Song (Julie O'Hara Mystery Series) (17 page)

Where the hell is he going? Downtown? Winter Park?

Even though the traffic was light, it was hard to follow the black SUV at night. Sabrina had to stay quite close, but she thought that it would be equally hard for him to see anything but her headlights behind him.

Downtown. He’s getting off. Careful! Don’t lose him…

Oh, God. Oh, God. He’s going to Lake
Eola.

Sabrina kept on going and drove past Mike as he pulled the SUV in next to
Eola Park Center. She turned the corner and quickly did a U-turn. When she came back, she spotted him walking up Robinson. She pulled out and slowly followed.

Didn’t they say her car was parked right near here? Oh, God.

Where is he going?

And then he was crossing the street, stopping at a door.

It looked like a restaurant…

Oh, yes, the Mint Julep.

I’ve heard of it.

But what is he doing?
It’s closed…

To Sabrina’s complete shock, the door opened and Mike went in.

* * * * * 

Chapter 37

J
ulie’s leg was killing her. The long, emotional day had taken its toll. And it wasn’t just her broken leg; her underarms were sore from the crutches and her lower back hurt like hell.

She was sitting, propped-up in her bed with the shoebox full of Hoyt Geller’s letters to Dianna at her side. She punched and pushed the pillows behind her, trying to get more comfortable. Sol was lying on the floor beside the bed. She called to him, patting the space next to her on the bed.

“C’mon up, Sol. C’mon, handsome! Come up here next to me.”

The huge cat didn’t even bother to lift his head.

“That’s nice, Sol. I feel like crap and I want to pat you, and you completely ignore me. You’re the reason people have dogs.”

She turned her attention again to the letters she’d been studying.

There was such a paradigm shift between Hoyt’s first letters and his last. What had taken her and Joe by surprise was the suddenness of the change. Julie was certain that it was the inmate suicides that had tipped the scale. She thought that, up until then, thinking about Dianna had given Hoyt
hope.

Sighing, she pushed the letters aside and reached over to turn off the lamp.

As she lay there in the dark, her thoughts traveled back through the years to a deteriorating young man in a prison cell.

How does anyone live without hope?

* * * * * 

Chapter 38

Massachusetts, 1999

H
oyt had been in the Men’s Correctional Facility for seventeen months and twelve days. Besides the two suicides, there had been another death that the prison officials referred to as a “bizarre accident”. Hoyt was hard-pressed to think of swallowing a light bulb as any kind of an accident, bizarre or otherwise.

Benny had pulled some strings and they were now housed together in a two bunk
cell.

“The last one came back, Hoyt,” said Benny, handing him a letter.

“No.”

“Yes, it did. My friend went to mail this one and the other one was returned to the post office box. They must have moved, Hoyt.”

“You’re lying. You’re lying! You don’t want me to write her anymore!”

“Keep your voice down. I’m not lying.”

“Yes, you are. You want me to forget about Dianna.”

“Yes, I do, but I’m not lying about the letter being returned,” said Benny. “Listen, Hoyt. Hanging on to Dianna like a life preserver isn’t good for you. You need to toughen up and learn to swim without her or
anybody
on the outside, or
you’ll never do the time
. This was bound to happen, sooner or later. We were lucky we didn’t get caught smuggling these letters out.”

“So that’s it,” said Hoyt. “You don’t want to get caught.”

“Oh, come on. What’s going to happen to me? Nothing. But
you
? A ‘sexual offender’ writing love letters to his ‘victim’? They’ll add to your time, Hoyt, and you’ll be spending even more hours with the scumbag-molesters getting ‘rehabilitated’!”

Hoyt knew Benny was right. He hadn’t been able to picture Dianna clearly for the last couple of months. He didn’t even know what to write anymore. He tried to think “I love you” but it came out “I hate this place”. He’d felt dead inside for weeks, hopeless. He hadn’t been talking to Benny. And Benny had let him alone.

That was good of him…

For the first time since he was assaulted, the tears rose up inside of Hoyt and burst through the dam he’d constructed. Desolate, he put his face in his hands and his shoulders shook with the loss. And then Benny was there with his arms around him.

“It’ll be easier, Hoyt, I promise you.”

* * * * * 

Chapter
39

Massachusetts, 2002

T
he inmates in Doctor Edwin Frommer’s rehab group were a particularly egregious bunch of sex offenders. Almost to the man, they were faking rehabilitation and marking time until they could get out. It was, therefore, not surprising that they showed little interest in “Pets for a Purpose.” PP was a new program designed to help inmates become “other centered” by rehabilitating shelter dogs or training special dogs to assist the blind and disabled.

The psychiatrist was also not surprised by the
one
inmate who did volunteer.

“Doctor
Frommer,” said Hoyt, hanging back after the rest had all trooped out, “could I volunteer for the dog training program?”

Ed
Frommer had been working with sexually deviant inmates for ten years and he was absolutely certain that Hoyt Geller wasn’t one of them. In his opinion, it was damaging for Hoyt to be in their company.

There was a light in the young man’s eyes that the doctor hadn’t seen in a long time.

“Why do you want to do this, Hoyt?”

“I could do a good job, Dr.
Frommer. I grew up on a farm. I’m good with animals.”

Frommer
smiled. He thought the program would be a wonderful escape for Hoyt.

“I think you’d be good at it, too, Hoyt. I’m going to recommend you for the program. It will conflict with the group, but we’ll continue our work on an individual basis.”

“You mean I’m not going to be in the group anymore?” said Hoyt, wide-eyed, not believing his good fortune.

“No,” said Dr.
Frommer, “not as long as you’re in that program.”

And so
, on April 15, 2002 - while everyone on the outside was scrambling to get their income taxes done - Hoyt was introduced to Cisco, a rambunctious, two-year old German Shepherd mix dog…and hell became a lot more bearable.

•

It was a beautiful day in early June and Hoyt almost felt free. Training Cisco outside, along with the other inmates and their charges, was the best part of Hoyt’s day. For awhile, focusing on his bond with the dog, he could forget the chain link and razor wire that tied the deep green lawn to the pale blue sky.

At the end of the week, Cisco would be gone. Hoyt would sorely miss him, but he was happy for him at the same time, because the animal had become an alter-ego of sorts.

Cisco was a “problem dog” who had ended up in a shelter. He loved people, but didn’t know how to behave around them. In his exuberance, Cisco would jump on them and knock them down. When they took him for a walk, it was like being in a horse-and-buggy…without the buggy.

Because of Hoyt’s love and consistent training, Cisco was a changed dog. All Hoyt had to do was give a hand signal and say “Down stay” and Cisco would drop to the ground and not move. It no longer mattered what was going on around him; Cisco’s eyes were on his master. The German
Shepherd wanted nothing more than to please Hoyt and was happily enjoying all the praise heaped upon him for doing so. Soon, he would be following the same commands for someone else in the surrounding community, who would love him and give him a good home.

Cisco would be paroled. He would be reconnected to society.

He would have a second chance at life.

•

Hoyt’s meetings with Dr. Frommer, only once a week now, were entirely different than the rehab group meetings. Hoyt was never specific about Benny, but, somehow, he felt that Frommer knew and understood the compromise he had made. They talked about a lot of things…and sometimes they talked about women. It was good. It made Hoyt feel that he hadn’t
changed
, that he was still a regular guy, just currently on
hold
.

Talking to
Frommer helped him deal with prison life, in general. Instead of looking at incarceration as his
life
, the way Benny did, Hoyt began to look at it as an
interim period
in his life. It had a beginning, a middle part, and an end…and Hoyt was coming up on the
end
.

Benny was a nagging problem for him, though. A sensitive and intelligent man, he was growing more and more disconsolate as Hoyt’s term neared completion. Try as he might, Hoyt couldn’t see anyone in the prison population who would be a good match for his friend. Hoyt thought that this would always be the case inside for someone like Benny, who had been alone before Hoyt came along and probably would be again. Because of his concern, he decided to talk about it with Dr.
Frommer.

“So, I’m really a little worried about how he’s going to cope with being alone,” said Hoyt. “He’s gotten attached to me, you know, Doc?”

“I do, indeed, Hoyt,” said Dr. Frommer, thoughtfully. “Do you think it would help if Benny could get into the Pets for a Purpose program?”

“Yes!” said Hoyt. “I think that would be great!”

“Well, you’ll have to get him to come in and volunteer,” said Frommer. “If he does, I’ll recommend him for the program.”

•

“He’s almost ready to graduate into the real world,” said Hoyt. He was referring to Blackie, a Lab-Collie mix that Benny had been training for several weeks.

“Yeah…like you,” said Benny.

Hoyt was scheduled to be released the next day, his seven year service at an end.

Benny smiled, putting on a brave front in spite of his sadness. “You know, Hoyt, I have to thank you for getting me into this program. I like being around the dogs. Everybody is nicer, even the guards.”

“That’s true,” said Hoyt, stroking his current charge, Biscuit, a Golden Retriever. “They can’t help but feel the love. You treat a dog right and he’ll love you unconditionally…unlike people.”

Unbidden, Dianna Wieland’s banished face came to mind.

“That’s how I feel about you, Hoyt,” said Benny.

Hoyt’s feelings for Benny were complex. In retrospect, it boiled down to one thing, though: In a cage full of brutes, two reasonable men had accommodated each other’s needs. But now it was over, and though Benny would be desolate for awhile, Hoyt couldn’t wait to be done with the physical aspect of their relationship, infrequent though it was. He had forced Dianna from his mind but he had replaced her with mental images of other women. It was the only way he’d been able cope with his bizarre situation.

“I know, Benny. I’ll miss you, too,” he said, delivering the expected line with sincerity worthy of an Academy Award. He was privately thrilled that the curtain was falling. When he walked through the prison gates, Hoyt planned to enjoy as many women as possible and never think of Benny again.

* * * * * 

Chapter
40

Massachusetts, 2004

I
t was a sunny autumn day and the Geller’s beat-up Ford F-150 truck was parked outside the correctional facility. Rolf and his wife, Katrin, stood in front of the pickup waiting for their only child. They were unsophisticated German immigrants in their sixties who still spoke with a heavy accent. Katrin, a short, stocky woman with gray hair pulled back in a thick ponytail, stood with her hands nervously clasped together. Her husband was her opposite in appearance, a man with thinning pale blond hair, tall and tanned from long summer hours of farm work. He paced back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back.

He turned at the sound of a guard escorting a prisoner to the gate and unlocking it.

The Gellers had said goodbye to a callow nineteen year-old boy, but it was a twenty-six year old man with a beard who walked toward them. At Hoyt’s request, they hadn’t been to visit him for six months…he didn’t have the beard then, and the difference was striking.

“Mother…Father…it’s good to see you,” said Hoyt.

Rolf swallowed and Katrin began to cry.

Hoyt put his arms around both of them and hugged them tightly.

•

“Happy birthday, Hoyt,” said his father, handing him the keys to a 1999 Toyota Camry. The five year old car had 70,000 miles on it, and there was nothing in Hoyt’s limited world that could have made his twenty-seventh birthday happier.