M Sellars - Perfect Trust

The van lurched left then almost instantly to the right, narrowly missing a parked Thunderbird and tossing me against my door just as I was about to snap the buckle of the shoulder harness into place. Judging from the blotches of primer decorating the otherwise darkly hued T-Bird, if we’d made contact we wouldn’t have been its first scrape by far.

I hadn’t remembered noticing the vehicle in our subdivision before, but there was something terribly familiar about it, although I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what. Still, it was the kind of aggravating feeling that makes a person say to oneself, “Whoa, deja vu.” The thought went as quickly as it came, however, since any further concentration on the subject was unceremoniously truncated by the sound of my friend’s voice.

“Asshole!” Ben exclaimed the epithet as we narrowly avoided slamming into the oncoming news van. “Learn ta’ fuckin’ drive!”

I straightened in my seat and returned to the task at hand, quickly coupling the safety belt before my friend’s infamous driving could send me tumbling again.

“So have you calmed down a bit?” I asked.

“Whaddaya mean?”

“I mean have you calmed down yet?” I repeated. “You just came through my front door like a runaway train, and so far you’ve been a little short on explanations.”

“I told ya’,” he offered. “That handwriting sample matched up ta’ Debbie Schaeffer.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I started, “but if I’m understanding this turn of events correctly, Debbie Schaeffer has been murdered, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Which by definition would make her dead already, right?”

“Oh, yeah, she’s definitely dead. No two ways about that.”

“Okay, then. So, I hate to sound cold,” I said as a preface to my question, “but what’s the rush?”

“Simple,” Ben returned. “Because of a chucklehead with a big mouth, there’s about ta’ be a goddamned media circus bustin’ out all over this thing.”

“That’s to be expected,” I shrugged, not seeing the correlation. “It was news then, it’ll be news now.”

“Yeah, well did ya’ happen ta’ notice the logo on the side of the van that just tried to kill us? Whichever asshole leaked the info also knew about the handwriting sample and decided ta’ toss your name inta’ the mix. The circus is headin’ for your friggin’ front yard, Kemosabe. Shit, it looks like I just barely managed to beat ‘em there.”

“So that’s why you didn’t want Felicity to go by the house.”

“Exactly. I just hope she gets the message and doesn’t blow it off.” He let out a heavy sigh before continuing. “Look, it’s bad enough that you’re gettin’ dragged inta’ somethin’ like this again, ‘specially now. I just wanna at least make sure ya’ don’t get caught up in the hype this time.”

“I don’t see how you are going to keep that from happening, Ben.”

“By doin’ exactly what I’m doin’. Gettin’ ya’ the hell outta there.”

“Maybe that will work tonight, but what about tomorrow? And the next day? And the next?” I asked.

“There might not be a tomorrow, or a next day for ‘em. My plan is ta’ keep ya’ as far away from this as possible,” he told me.

“They’ll just camp outside my door.”

“Already on it. The coppers in Briarwood know what’s up and they’re gonna take care of it.”

“They can’t restrict the freedom of the press, Ben.”

“No, but they can protect the rights of a private citizen.”

“Okay, so then why didn’t they just take care of it now instead of this whole clandestine escape crap?”

“They are. We just gotta give ‘em some time to do it.”

“I really don’t think this is going to work, Ben.”

“Well, we’re gonna make it work,” he shot back.

“Think about it, Ben,” I appealed. “You just said yourself that I’m being dragged into this. The damage has already been done. I think at this point it’s out of your control.”

“Not entirely.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier if I just made a statement to the press telling them I’m not involved in this investigation?” I offered.

“No reason for them to believe ya’,” he answered. “Especially once they find out you’re lyin’.”

It took a moment for the balance of his comment to sink in. When it finally did, I almost stuttered my next question. “Just a second ago you said you were keeping me as far from this as possible. Did I miss something here?”

“Missin’? No. Denyin’? Yeah, prob’ly. Gimme a break, I know how ya’ are.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You ain’t serious? I gotta spell it out for ya’?”

“Please.”

He huffed out a heavy sigh then launched into an explanation, “It means, number one, less than forty-eight hours ago ya’ just showed up at a crime scene right out of the blue, so somethin’ tells me ya’ just might do it again.” He paused as he hooked the van through a quick right turn and down the ramp onto the highway. “And number two, ya’ handed me a piece of paper with Debbie Schaeffer’s handwritin’ all over it that ya’ say ya’ wrote yourself. So, whether I like it or not, you’re already connected to all of this by some of that weird ass Twilight Zone shit.

“Believe me, this is a decision I did not wanna make,” he continued, “but the way I got it figured, I have two choices. Either I keep ya’ as isolated as possible and not even let ya’ know what’s goin’ on; or, I go ahead and bring ya’ in on it right from the git’go and try ta’ keep your involvement to a minimum.

“Considerin’ what you’ve already done and what I’ve seen ya’ do in the past, I doubt the first choice has any chance of workin’-period. That leaves me with nothin’ but option two. So I figure if I can exert some control over the contact you have with this case, then maybe ya’ won’t go off into la-la land on me.”

“That’s a pretty big maybe,” I told him. “I don’t exactly have control over it myself.”

“That’s why I want Felicity ta’ meet us,” he explained. “I want ‘er there with ya’ every goddamned second.”

“She might not have that much control over it either.” I shook my head at the comment. “Besides, you know she’s not going to be happy about this.”

“Whaddaya mean ‘not happy’?” he returned. “She’s gonna be freakin’ mad as hell. I just hope she leaves me some hair.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” I told him. “So what are you going to do? Sneak me in and out of my back door?”

“If I hafta.”

“You know, they’ll get to me eventually.”

“As long as that eventually is after it’s all over and they’ve got no reason to put the spotlight on ya’, then I’m okay with it, ‘cause ya’ won’t be interesting to ‘em anymore.”

“I don’t think we’ll be that lucky,” I sighed, “but I do appreciate the effort.”

“Not a prob, Kemosabe.”

Having dispensed with my confusion over the immediacy of the situation, I moved on to the next point that needed clarification for me. “So how did you make this connection to begin with?”

“Don’t you watch the news, Row? Old dude out pickin’ up aluminum cans stumbled across a body wrapped up in a plastic drop cloth this morning,” he explained. “What was left of a body anyway-she’d been there for a while. M.E. says a couple of months probably.

“She was stuffed back up in the brush on a kinda isolated section of Three Sixty-Seven on the way ta’ the Clark Bridge. Best guess is that’s why she didn’t get found until now.”

Disgusting visions of a corpse left unattended for the better part of two months flitted through my head. Having never witnessed such a thing before in real life, the mental picture was an imagining based on remembrances of Hollywood special effects. The image was more than enough to turn my stomach, and I was afraid that the real thing might be far worse than anything I could conjure in my head.