John Burley - The Absence of Mercy

“I…” He faltered, searching for some means to connect with her, for some way to ask her about the things he was thinking. “How are you?”

She stared back at him without answering, her body poised in a defensive position.

“I heard that your father was in the hospital.” Ben stumbled onward. “Pneumonia, is it? I… I just want you to know that I’ve been thinking about him. I hope he’s feeling bett—”

“You stay away from my father,” she responded with such vehemence that for a moment Ben thought she was on the verge of striking him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, stepping past her and continuing down the hallway. “I didn’t mean to…”

“You stay away from both me and my family,” she called after him.

Ben reached the end of the hall and placed a hand on the doorknob leading to the basement.

“ Do you hear me? ” Her tone was loud and defiant within the tiled passageway.

Ben pushed the door open, stepping into the stairwell. It was quiet in here, but the sound of Monica’s voice carried through the open door as it swung slowly closed on its pneumatic piston. Her words snapped at his heels as he hastened down the concrete steps toward the floor below. “ You stay away from us. Do you hear? You and the rest of your twisted family. You stay away from us all! ”

Sam Garston drove by the residence for the third time that day, stopping at the entrance to the driveway. Ben’s car was parked in front of the house, and Sam pulled the cruiser in behind him and turned off the engine. He sighed. He had no business here, he knew. Ben was no longer under formal investigation. There was no piece of news they had to discuss, no change in the situation between them. So, w hy do I keep coming here? Sam asked himself. What am I looking for? What do I expect to find? Perhaps nothing, he thought as he stepped out of the vehicle and approached the front door, the soles of his shoes clicking lightly on the warm pavement. As odd as it sounded, Sam still considered himself Ben’s friend—one of his only friends, he realized. Perhaps he came here more as an ally than an adversary, to see how Ben was holding up under the strain of the last several months. He had seen the way people in this town treated him—their collective judgments raining silently upon him without mercy or reservation—and although Sam had difficulty blaming them, he also couldn’t help but feel empathy for the man. There was no one Ben could talk to now, no one in his corner. And so he had stopped by once again to check up on him, to let him know there was someone in this town who still worried about him, who was available if Ben wanted him to be.

He ascended the steps and rapped three times on the door.

From inside came the heavy rush of a hurried approach down the front hallway. For a brief moment, Sam was struck with the certainty that Thomas had returned. In his mind, he imagined the door swinging open, the boy’s face staring back at him as the long, sharp instrument in his hand fell in practiced and determined swings into the side of Sam’s neck—an arch of pulsing blood jetting upward into the fine spring air.

Something large hit the door with enough force to make it shudder on its hinges, and Sam took a reflexive step backward, his right hand falling instinctively to the grip of his firearm. Then the guttural bellows of the dog erupted from the other side of the thick wooden slab that separated them: “WHOOOOOOH!! WHOO! WHOO!! WHOOOHHWHOOH!!”

“I’ve already had to replace that door once,” someone commented from the driveway behind him, and Sam spun around quickly, beginning to pull the weapon from its holster.

“ Hey, take it easy, ” Ben exclaimed, dropping the long-handled shovel he was holding and showing Sam the palms of his hands.

Sam reseated the weapon. “Don’t sneak up on me, Ben.”

“I wasn’t trying to,” Ben assured him. “I mean,”—he looked around—“this is my property. I may not be welcome anywhere else in this town, but I do believe I have a right to be here .”

Sam descended the steps and joined him in the front yard. He nodded at the shovel. “Doing some planting, are you? A little yard work?”

“The thought occurred to me recently that I ought to dig a moat.” Ben stooped to pick up the shovel, then leaned it against the house.

“You still having trouble with the neighborhood kids? I told you before I can go talk to their parents.”

“No, it’s fine,” he said. “It’s mostly harmless pranks. I’ve had to replace two broken windows from rock-throwing, but that’s really been the worst of it. It’s probably best to ignore them.”

“Well, I don’t tolerate vandalism in this town. You let me know if you want me to put a stop to it, and I will.”

Ben nodded.

“How you holdin’ up otherwise?”

“Fine.”

“I heard you quit the CO.”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “I couldn’t do it anymore. Too many bad memories there.”

“Nat’s gonna miss you. That kid really looks up to you.”

“He comes by the house every once in a while.” Ben smiled.

Sam looked out at the quiet suburban street. A young boy on a bicycle pedaled past. “You ever hear from Susan?” the chief asked, unable to help himself. “She ever try to contact you?”

“Nothing,” the other replied, and Sam, who’d based a large portion of his career on the ability to separate truth from dishonesty, knew that Ben wasn’t telling him everything.

“You know, the best thing for all of them would be to turn themselves in,” he said. “We know they crossed the border into Mexico, and we have people tracking them down even now. It’s only a matter of time. This won’t play out for long.”

Ben looked as if he was about to respond to that, but chose instead to change the subject. “How’s the ticker?”

Sam smiled confidently. The five days he’d spent in the hospital following a heart attack on the day Ben’s family had disappeared were already receding in his memory. “Good as new,” he declared, and tapped his chest with his right hand as if to demonstrate.

Ben nodded. “I guess one way or the other we’re all on borrowed time,” he observed as they made the short walk together to the parked police car in the driveway.

Sam considered this for a moment, then opened the door of his cruiser and lowered his large frame inside. “I’ll let you get back to enjoying your weekend. You give me a call if you want to talk.” He offered Ben a discerning look. “I’m sure you’ll contact me if you hear anything from them, won’t you, Ben? You don’t want to allow yourself to become an accomplice in all of this.”

“I already am,” the man in front of him replied, turning his back on the chief and heading for the front door of the only refuge he still had left. “I already am.”

Ben stood looking down at the wooden crate submerged in the earth, the sweat rolling freely down his flushed face. It had taken him thirty minutes this time to dig his way down to it. He was getting better at it, his arms becoming accustomed to the stony soil and the way it resisted his efforts.

The long-handled shovel lay at his feet. He wondered why he had carried it with him to the front of the house to answer Sam’s visit. It had been an instinctual move, but he wasn’t sure it had been the right one. The big man had a curious nature, his eyes missing nothing. Perhaps, on some level, Ben wanted to be caught—although he didn’t think so. More likely, he had brought the tool with him because the best way to hide something is not to hide it at all. People never look carefully at what’s directly in front of them. He had learned that lesson over the past year. He had learned it well.