Scott Pratt - In good faith

Fraley fumbled with the clasp while Natasha let loose a steady stream of expletives. It took almost a minute to get it unhooked. He pulled the chain from beneath Natasha’s neck. When Fraley had bagged the necklace, he looked at Norcross’s face. The big man was flushed and beginning to sweat.

“Turn her back over and get the cuffs off of her,” Fraley said. “I think we have everything we came for.”

Natasha went silent as Norcross rolled her over. Fraley held his gun on her while Norcross unlocked the cuffs, pulled the T-shirt off of her head, and stepped carefully away.

“Don’t leave town,” Fraley said as the agents began to back towards the kitchen. Jimbo opened the door, and light seeped into the dim interior of the room. “As soon as we get the results from the lab and figure out where this necklace came from, we’ll be back to get you.”

Suddenly, the lightbulb in the lamp that Marie had turned on exploded with a loud pop! Fraley heard the bits of glass fly against the inside of the lamp shade, and when he looked towards the lamp, he could see smoke rising.

Natasha slowly pulled herself to her knees and glared at Fraley. She began to speak, and Fraley felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

“Don’t worry,” she said, her freakish eyes boring into him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Tuesday, November 11

Fraley looked up at the clock as he walked through the door of the small house he rented on Cranston Street. Almost midnight. It had been an exhausting day, beginning with the raid at Natasha’s. As he opened the closet door to hang up his coat, Fraley heard the familiar meow of his golden-eyed tabby. He felt the cat rubbing against his leg and reached down to pick it up.

“How’s Clementine tonight?” Fraley said, scratching lightly around her ears and down her back. “I’ll bet you’re hungry. Sorry Pops was so late getting home.”

Fraley walked into the kitchen, set the cat down gently, and opened a can of food.

“How about tuna and bacon tonight?” he said. “Good for your ticker.”

Fraley scraped the food into a plastic bowl and stood watching as Clementine enthusiastically went about devouring it.

“Pops is gonna get out of these smelly clothes. You let me know when you’re ready to go out.”

Immediately after the raid, Fraley had made the hundred-mile drive to Knoxville to hand-deliver Natasha’s hair samples to the lab. While he was there, he managed to convince the lab supervisor to give the DNA comparison top priority, which meant Fraley should hear something by tomorrow afternoon.

After driving back, Fraley set about trying to identify the necklace he’d taken from Natasha. The cross was somewhat unique in that it had been manufactured in the form of a ribbon with a small diamond at its center. He began by driving to Gladys Brockwell’s daughter’s home. He showed her the gold cross, but she said she’d never seen it. She also said her mother had become an avid Internet shopper. If she’d purchased the necklace over the Internet, Fraley knew the forensic computer analysts could find the transaction. The problem was it could take days, even weeks.

So Fraley hit the streets. He showed the necklace to eight different jewelers before he found someone who recognized it and could identify the manufacturer and the regional distributor. Once he had the distributor’s name, Fraley tried to contact them by phone, but by that time it was nearly seven o’clock and no one was manning the company’s switchboard. It would have to wait until morning.

After grabbing a bite to eat, Fraley had gone to the hospital to see Dillard. He found him in the intensive care waiting room looking haggard and worried. He hadn’t shaved, the lines in his forehead looked drawn and rigid, and there were dark circles beneath both eyes. Though Dillard barely spoke, Fraley had stayed until eleven forty-five. He remembered the agony of his first wife’s death, the feelings of emptiness and loneliness, and he knew it was better for Dillard to have someone around. Besides, Fraley lived only a couple of blocks away.

Dillard managed to say that he’d finally called his children, but he’d instructed both of them to stay at school until the weekend. He said he hoped Caroline would be out of intensive care by then, but the way he said it made Fraley think it would probably be much longer. Dillard had also pointed out Caroline’s mother in the waiting room. He said he thought she somehow blamed him for Caroline’s illness, because she was all the way across the room reading a book. She left around nine without speaking.

Fraley tried to tell Dillard about the raid at Natasha’s and the progress he’d made with the necklace, but nothing he said seemed to have any effect. It was like talking to a mannequin. Sheriff Bates had shown up around nine, so for a little while, Fraley at least had someone to talk to.

Fraley donned his favorite flannel pajamas and went to the refrigerator. He grabbed a can of Budweiser and went into the den. Just as he was about to sit down, Clementine meowed again, signaling that she was ready. Fraley opened the front door and let her outside. He sat down in the recliner, sipping his beer and watching a rerun of his favorite show, Law amp; Order. Just as he finished his beer, he heard the cat scratching, got up, and let her back inside.

“Pops is bushed,” he said, “and he’s going to bed.”

An hour after Fraley lay down, a noise awakened him. He lay in bed listening for a few seconds, heard it again. It was a soft thump, as though someone were knocking on the side of the house. It sounded as if it were coming from just outside the back door. Fraley sat up and reached into the drawer of his bedside table and retrieved his pistol. Leaving the lights off, he crept through the house in his pajamas, stopping briefly at the closet to pick up a flashlight. He moved silently to the front door, let himself out slowly, tiptoed down the front steps, and moved along the wall on the side of the house, his heart pounding. The wind was whipping and the ground beneath his bare feet was cold and hard. When he reached the corner of the house, Fraley flipped on the flashlight. The small backyard was quiet and still except for the wind. He walked slowly all the way around the house, finding nothing. As he doubled back, he heard a scraping sound. He looked towards the sound and realized a maple that needed trimming was rubbing against the house in the wind.

Fraley’s feet were beginning to go numb because of the cold, so he moved quickly back around the side and up the steps. Clementine regarded him curiously as he locked the door behind him.

“Sorry, honey,” he said. “I guess Pops is getting a little jumpy in his old age.”

Fraley bent over, picked up his pet, and carried her off to the bedroom. Ten minutes later, he was sound asleep, his left hand resting on his beloved cat, his right hand resting on his revolver.

I’d been at the hospital for thirty-six hours, unable to sleep or eat, barely able to communicate. The sparse news I received about Caroline was dire, and I kept experiencing feelings of desperation and hopelessness. My head was pounding, my throat was dry, and it seemed that every joint in my body ached whenever I attempted to move.

The intensive care waiting room was recently constructed, a large, open space with a skylight above, comfortable chairs, and tapestries on the walls. Jack and Lilly were calling every hour or so for updates, but I didn’t have the heart to tell them how serious Caroline’s condition really was. Fraley and Leon Bates both stopped by sometime during the evening, but I had very little recollection of anything they said.

I was sitting in the chair with my eyes closed and my feet propped up on a table in front of me when my cell phone rang. I opened my eyes to find that I was the only person left in the waiting room. I picked the cell up off of the table next to me and didn’t recognize the number that was calling. I looked at my watch-twelve minutes after two in the morning. I pushed the button and lifted the phone to my ear.