Brad Parks - Eyes of the Innocent

“Oh, come on, what’s wrong? Boy troubles?”

“I wish. I’m going over ELEC documents.”

ELEC was the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Center. Every candidate and political group in the state has to file reports stating where they get their money and what they do with it. Most politicians give the bare minimum of information-you’ll see line items like “$28,350 … Miscellaneous expenses”-while staying (pretty much) within the law. Usually, the only worthwhile thing we get from ELEC reports are donor lists filled with names of individuals and businesses that are getting rich off government contracts. And, this being New Jersey, bribery of this sort is not only prevalent but legal.

Still, wading through the reports takes time, concentration, and the ability to resist butting your head into your computer while you wait for another PDF document to load.

“ELEC reports,” I said. “What’s the matter, you having trouble sleeping?”

“No, I’ve just been looking into everything about big, fat old Windy I could find and I wanted to make sure I was thorough.”

“Tina said you were on the streets, running down some rumor?”

“Yeah, that’s what I told her,” he said. “I just knew if she saw me in the office she’d keep bothering me. So I’m sitting in a coffee shop, doing it on my laptop. Don’t tell her.”

I felt a surge of paternal pride: my little intern Tommy had already learned the virtue of lying to his editor. Sniff. They grow up so fast.

“Oh, your secret is safe,” I assured him. “I was just calling to give you a heads-up. I’m going over to Rhonda Byers’s place.”

“Oh, okay,” he said. “What’s happening there?”

I told him what I had learned about Windy’s extracurricular activities and their unintended consequences.

“And you think Rhonda Byers did all that?” Tommy asked when I was all done.

“Yep,” I said.

“Really? Rhonda Byers?”

“You don’t buy it?”

“Well, I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure you’re right. It’s just … I just-”

“Spit it out!”

“She seems so nice.”

I laughed at him. Apparently, grasshopper still had much to learn.

“No, I’m serious!” he protested. “I met her a bunch of times at council meetings. I think she’s the only one besides me who goes to all of them. She’s not over-the-top friendly or anything, but she’s always very kind to me. She explains things to me all the time when I don’t get them. She probably has a better idea than her husband what’s actually going on in this city.”

“Yeah, I already figured she was hogging most of the IQ allotted to the Byers household,” I said. “But to me that makes it fit even better. A smart, with-it woman like her learns that her idiot husband is two-timing her in the biggest way possible. Can’t you just see her losing it?”

The line was quiet for a moment as Tommy considered it.

“No,” he said at last. “Not really.”

“Well, you got a better idea for what happened?”

Another pause.

“No. Not really.”

“Well, there you go,” I said as I pulled up in front of the Byers residence. “I’m off to the black widow’s web. Wish me luck.”

* * *

The TV trucks had all departed the Byers’s neighborhood-off to find Shocking Things You Might Not Know About Your Deodorant, no doubt-and the crime scene tape that had been stretched across their front gate was now flapping in the late afternoon breeze. It was only four o’clock, but the sun was already getting low. The wind rustled some dead leaves as I opened the gate, which creaked as I swung it shut behind me. I was starting to feel like a character in a slasher flick-and not the wily brunette who survives to the end. I was the bubble-boobed blonde who somehow ended up getting killed in her underwear.

And why shouldn’t I be a bit queasy? If I was right, Rhonda Byers had killed three people. And even though one of them had it coming, two of them were innocent children. I didn’t want to talk to a person like that. I didn’t even want to be breathing the same air.

Still, there was a story to be written. So I rang the doorbell. I heard footsteps, then a woman who was probably Rhonda Byers’s sister-same height, same build, same bearing-answered the door.

“May I help you,” she said without emotion.

“I’m Carter Ross. I’m a reporter with the Eagle-Examiner and-”

“She’s not here,” the woman said immediately, and started closing the door with all due haste.

Under normal circumstances, I’m all for getting a door slammed in my face. It’s the sort of thing that lets a reporter know he’s still alive. But I couldn’t let it happen this time. So I stuck my foot across the threshold before the door could shut.

“I know this is a difficult time for the family,” I said, as the door bounced off my shoe. “But we’re just trying to make our coverage as complete as possible and I was hoping for her help.”

The woman was about to find a new way to tell me to get lost. But then, from an inside room, I heard that authoritarian voice.

“Let him in,” Mrs. Byers said.

I was escorted into a dim living room, where Rhonda Byers was sitting on a Queen Anne-style couch with the shades drawn. Her bare feet were propped on a nearby coffee table. She was no longer dressed in the gray suit and uncomfortable shoes. It was now a sweatshirt and jeans. I surmised a girdle had been removed as well.

The room did not have a television, just a lot of shelves packed with books, all of them spine out. She was a reader, obviously. There were knickknacks, but the room didn’t feel especially cluttered. I sometimes get my decorating styles a little mixed up, but I was fairly certain the room would qualify as Victorian. Except it wasn’t your charming Aunt Beverly’s Victorian, where all the little baubles have stories behind them. It was your stern Aunt Helga’s, where everything had a brittle feeling, like you couldn’t move anything-not even the air-or something would break.

“Mrs. Byers, Carter Ross from the Eagle-Examiner, ” I said.

She offered no greeting, smile, or handshake, which was fine by me. I didn’t particularly feel like returning any of them.

“We’re writing a story about the hours leading up to the councilman’s disappearance,” I continued. “I was hoping you could fill in some blanks for me.”

She looked at me with the same expressionless face her sister wore.

“Mr. Ross, I’ll be honest, I don’t want to talk with you, just like I didn’t want to go on television today,” she said, without much enthusiasm. “But the police tell me that media attention is good, because it will help them find Wendell. So I’ll do what I can.”

Okay, so that’s how she was going to play it: the dutiful wife sacrificing herself to bring her poor husband back home. I could roll with that.

“I’d like to go through the final forty-eight hours before he disappeared,” I said. “It would start Friday evening. What were you and Mr. Byers doing that night?”

During the next hour or so, she went over everything, and I drilled her on every inane detail. It was a long succession of political fund-raisers, pancake breakfasts, civic association meetings, high school basketball games, and so on. It was the sort of thing you expected from a local politician-the hobnobbing with the moneyed set, the glad-handing with the constituents, the seeing and being seen. Windy was a man on the go.

But, strikingly, he wasn’t on the go with Mrs. Byers. At every stop on Windy’s itinerary, I kept asking where she was. And she always seemed to be somewhere else-reading at home, or at a church function, or at her sister’s house. She admitted she had no idea where Windy was at certain times, or that she had only learned where he had been after the fact. She often was uncertain about when events began or ended. She never seemed to be able to offer an exact time when her husband arrived back home.