J. Wachowski - In Plain View

3:30:58 p.m.

We finished way past lunch. Since we were expected back at the office already, Ainsley was driving like a high-school boy after dark. The tires screamed at every stop light.

Bits and pieces were flying around in my head, I needed quiet to sort through the whirl.

“I can’t believe you talked her into that interview. I never thought she’d go for it.” Ainsley rattled along, doing the ten o’clock football recap. Let’s see that play again. Wasn’t that great?

“Yeah.”

“I thought we’d never get it. But you talked her into it. Man. That was great. Great stuff. The farm and teaching. Maybe I should call the high school tomorrow? I bet I can get yearbook photos of Mrs. Ott from way back. What do you think? Maddy?”

“Yeah, great.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Timing’s not right.”

“What timing? On the track?”

“No,” I snapped. “Think about this. Grace said Tom came to her to complain about feeling betrayed before school started, but he was arrested after that. Rachel said the same thing. He was upset before they got caught in the car.”

“So?”

“So something must have happened at the fire station first. Tom gets all worked up about it. He goes out with his girl-he’s frantic, he’s pushing her to marry him, give him some reason to return to the Amish-not only does she turn him down, he also gets busted with jack-off material in the trunk. Doesn’t that sound funky to you?”

“You mean like funky luck?”

“I mean like a funky-fucking-set-up. Somebody set him up with those magazines. That’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Why?”

“To ruin his reputation?” As soon as I said it, I knew it felt right. “To make him look like a sneaky, untrustworthy bastard? To distract him? Revenge maybe? It has to be something to do with that fight at the fire station.”

The chief had said Tom and Pat were fighting right before he died. Was that what put Tom “in a twist” before he saw Rachel? Or did the boys fight later, over the magazines in the trunk? Talking to Pat just moved to the top of my list.

I jumped to Tom’s death and started playing with another idea. “How much do you think a firefighter makes a year?”

“I don’t know. Maybe 40K?”

“How much would that cheesy apartment he lived in cost a year?”

“Maybe five hundred. At most.”

“Used car. Cheap-o housing. No drugs, no expenses. He’s been working four or five years in the fire service. He could have forty, fifty grand saved. Maybe more. That might rate a personal visit from a banker.”

“Whoa.” Ainsley shook his head. “Never thought of that.”

“Oh, it’s diabolical,” I cackled as I pieced possibilities together. “Tom makes it up to his girl and sticks it to his old man all in one blow. Fucking ingenious.”

“What?” Ainsley flashed quick looks between the road and my grin. “Why is that good?”

“He’s left all that cash in Rachel’s hands. She can do whatever she wants now. If we’re right about the money, she could choose to leave her father’s farm. Buy her own place. Or go to college. Now, she has a choice.”

I sat up straight, leaning against the strap of the seatbelt. If the money went to split Rachel from her father, the binoculars went to split him from what? Peace of mind? His community? I crammed that thought under cover. Would my story make it worse for him? No room for that guilt. I had to produce a piece for television and Rachel Jost would be appearing in it. If Old Man Jost had to take the hot seat with his Amish neighbors over six minutes of pre-prime, well, maybe he deserved it.

“Tom Jost wasn’t shunned. Rachel told us that,” I calculated aloud. “He left the community and didn’t take vows.”

“Sort of the same difference, isn’t it? He never went back.”

“He never left.” It all spilled into place, his apartment, his relationship with the other firefighters, his relationship with Rachel. “That’s why Rachel said, ‘I would be his Amish.’”

What’s a guy who follows rules to do, when nobody else will play fair? The words of an Amish school ditty I’d found in my research came rushing back:

I must be a Christian child

Gentle, patient, meek and mild;

Must be honest, simple, true

In my words and actions too…

Must remember God can view

All I think, and all I do.

“‘God can view all I think, and all I do,’” I quoted for Ainsley’s benefit. Picturing those binoculars in Jost’s closet, I shivered. Could Jost have been trying to get the old man arrested? “Remind me to call our favorite sheriff when we get in. I need a little instruction on Samaritan law in this fair county.”

Ainsley looked confused, but hopeful.

Just the way I like ’em.

3:38:25 p.m.

Jenny usually walked around the playground during outside time. The school aides didn’t pay much attention to her when she walked. They were too busy yelling at the big kids.

“One at a time!”

“No chicken on the monkey bars.”

“Mulch stays on the ground.”

It was a good day to walk. Sunny, but cold. With her hands in her pockets, Jenny stopped under the twisty slide. It was shadowy there, like a cave. She could see out but it was hard for other people to see her.

There was a man watching the playground. He leaned against the hood of his big shiny car, arms across his chest.

Jenny couldn’t stop staring. Was it him?

His car was parked at the curb where other moms sometimes waited for kids after school. He looked like he was waiting for somebody.

She wasn’t sure if it was him. She decided to climb the slide tower for a better view.

She was only a second grader the last time she saw him. He came to The Funeral. He stayed at the back of the church though. One time, she waved hello but he turned his face away. She didn’t see him again after that.

Jenny thought he must be mad at her, maybe even hated her. It wasn’t her fault that Aunt Maddy moved in and took over. Thinking about it made Jenny feel like crying and wrecking something. If she thought about it too long, she got that shrinky feeling inside and couldn’t eat, until she smelled the inside of Mama’s closet for a long time.

From up on top of the slide, she could see pretty well. There were some trees and dumpsters and the grass field and then sidewalk.

He smiled at her and waved with one hand.

Jenny was surprised by how good she felt seeing him recognize her, like a happy memory coming back for no reason. She waved back at him with a small, secret bend of her wrist that hid the motion from everybody else. She smiled, too.

The kid behind her at the top of the ladder was getting impatient. “Go!”

Jenny pushed off and leaned back, speeding faster through the tunnel than she expected. Her stomach felt afraid and excited and sick and happy all at the same time.

The bell rang right as she shot off the slide onto the mulch.

Jenny looked at the blacktop where the other kids were running to line up. She looked back at him. He called her with a wave.

What a relief!

Usually grown-ups came to the door to sign out the kids who were going home. If the kids were on the playground though, parents usually signed them out first and then took kids home from the playground.

He probably signed her out already. Jenny was glad. She didn’t want to go back inside. She wanted to leave. Right now. She walked straight out to the curb across the grass.

He used to pick her up all the time, before. It wasn’t like he was a stranger or something. She knew not to get in a car with strangers. She wasn’t a baby. He knew it, too. He even let her sit in the front seat.