C Box - Blue Heaven

Jesus , Jess thought, they’re talking about me. What is Fiona up to? Jess withdrew from the front of the window but pressed his shoulder against the siding next to it so he could hear better and not be seen.

Fiona said, “You know as well as me what’s happened out there over the past few years. First, his wife left him. You know about his son. He’s a tragedy, just a tragedy. Something obviously happened to him.”

Carey said to Singer, “He’s the trustee who mops the floor at the station. You’ve probably seen him around.”

“I’ve seen him,” Singer said.

Jess couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Fiona continued, “Why else would an old single man be buying food that only little kids eat?”

“That’s not much to go on, Fiona,” the sheriff said.

Her voice rose. “But think about it. His ranch is failing. His son is a mess. His wife leaves him, but he shows absolutely no interest in the opposite sex. I mean, single lonely man, available woman”-Jess could imagine her gesturing to herself-“and he doesn’t do anything? At first I thought it was me, but maybe it’s because he has other interests, you know? Even his employee left him recently, I found out. He’s completely by himself out there. Who knows what he’s up to? Maybe he’s got those kids, and he’s holding them prisoner!”

“Fiona…” The sheriff was skeptical. He turned to Singer. “What’s this do to our theory about Tom Boyd?”

Singer shook his head quickly. “Not much.”

Carey paused, waiting for clarification.

“We’ve got the tape,” Singer said. “Boyd’s missing. That part of our theory still holds.”

“So where does this rancher fit in, if at all?”

Jess was frozen where he stood, stunned.

“I’ve read a lot of magazine articles about sexual predators,” Fiona interjected, her voice rising. “It grows in them. Just grows in them until they get the opportunity to gratify it. I’ve never thought before how much he fits the profile. Look”-she dropped her tone again-“he gets mail in large envelopes without any return addresses on them. Maybe that’s how he gets his pornography?”

No , Jess thought absently. That’s how developers send offers these days, knowing I won’t open them if I know where they came from. Jesus…

“I’m surprised you haven’t looked to make sure,” Carey said, deadpan.

“I can’t believe you said that,” she sniffed. “That’s a huge insult. I could lose my job with the postal service if I did, you know.”

Fiona suddenly got an idea and nearly shot out of her seat. “Hold it! Maybe that’s how he met Tom Boyd? UPS delivers out there, you know. Maybe the two of them struck up a friendship based on a common interest,” she paused dramatically, “ pedophilia . I’ve read where those people seek each other out.”

Jess didn’t know what to do. Burst in, set the record straight? He was so flummoxed he didn’t even know if he could speak clearly. But how would he explain the groceries without telling them the rest or coming up with some kind of lie? What if the sheriff held him, or arrested him on the spot? Singer could send that dark ex-cop, Gonzalez, back to his house to find the Taylor children. He wished Singer weren’t there, because he might have a chance of clearing himself if it was just Fiona and the sheriff, because obviously Carey didn’t give Fiona much credibility. But with Singer there…

“You can either do something, or I’ll call my contacts at the networks,” Fiona threatened. “I’m sure they’d find this new development very interesting.”

Jess walked away from the window. The rain pounded his hat. He was angry, and getting angrier. He swung into the cab of his pickup, started the motor, and roared down the street, not caring if anyone could hear him leave.

JESS COULD see J.J. through the locked front doors of the county courthouse. As usual in his orange one-piece trustee jumpsuit, J.J. was cleaning, spraying banisters with disinfectant, rubbing the wood until it glowed. Jess rapped hard on the glass of the door. Inside, J.J. looked up, but in the wrong direction. Jess rapped again, hitting the glass so hard it stung his knuckles. J.J.’s head swiveled, and his eyes narrowed when he saw Jess. There was something canine in the way J.J. looked at him.

“J.J., I need to talk with you,” Jess shouted. The rain pounded the street behind him and sluiced through the gutters.

J.J. shrugged, couldn’t hear him. But he let the cloth fall from his hands and walked slowly across the floor to the doors.

Jess could see J.J.’s mouth. “Locked.”

Who had a key? Jess wondered. He needed to talk with his son.

Jess pulled futilely on the doors, rattling them. J.J. watched as if he expected alarms to go off. He shook his head, scared to open them from the inside.

“Hold on,” Jess said, raising his hand, and turned for his pickup that was parked on the street. He returned with the rifle. J. J. saw it, and backed away, his eyes wide.

Jess used the butt of it to break through a panel of glass on the door. No alarm sounded. He reached through the hole and pulled back on the bar, opening the door.

“I don’t mean to scare you,” Jess told J.J. as he stepped inside and let the door wheeze shut.

“I could get in trouble,” J.J. said. Jess noticed that J.J.’s voice was clearer than usual. It had a deep timbre to it that was usually missing. Jess knew what that indicated. This is when a window sometimes opened, if briefly, a window of illumination. It didn’t last long.

“J.J., I think you can help me,” Jess said, then rephrased it: “I need your help.”

“You broke the door. Man, I’m going to get in trouble now.”

“Tell them I did it.”

J.J. nodded.

“You seem okay. Are you okay?”

“Not really, no,” J.J. said, shaking his head. “I gotta go back for my meds. What time is it?”

Jess looked at his wristwatch. “Nearly seven.”

“I’m late. I shoulda been back to the ward. They’re gonna come looking for me.”

Jess tried to calm himself. If he was calm, J.J. was more likely to respond.

J.J. said, “When my meds wear off my own sick brain starts taking over. I see shit I know can’t really be there.”

“I know that, son,” Jess said, stepping closer. J.J. recoiled.

“Don’t worry,” Jess said, “I won’t touch you.”

“It isn’t you,” J.J. said. “It’s your germs. I can’t get dirty, like these floors. I clean them and clean them, but the people here, they make them filthy again every day. They bring their filth in with them from the outside. I can’t win.”

Jess breathed deeply. He felt a pang for taking advantage this way.

“J.J., tell me about the ex-cops. There are four of them. You’ve been around them here. Are they good?”

“No.” Emphatic, spittle flying.

“Are they honest?”

“NO!”

“What have you heard?”

“They want to find those kids,” J.J. said.

Jess grimaced. Of course they wanted to find the Taylors.

“They want to hurt them,” J.J. said. “And they called Monica a bitch. ”

“Monica Taylor?” Jess asked, taken aback by J.J.’s familiarity with her. “You know her?”

J.J. smiled a dark and secret smile. It reminded Jess of the way J.J. used to be, before all of this happened. That wasn’t necessarily good.

“She’s a pretty woman,” his son said. “She was wild.”

This startled Jess. “What do you mean? How did you know her?”

“Some things I remember like they happened yesterday. I remember Monica that way.”