Some Call It Revenge

by

G. Miki Hayden

 

Short story Edgar winner G. Miki Hayden is up for a Barry Award at the coming Bouchercon. Her last book out, The Naked Writer, is a style and composition guide for writers at all levels. She teaches at the Writer’s Digest online school and freelances as an editor for other writers. Ms. Hayden appeared in the very first issue of The Back Alley, and we're very happy to have her back!

 

 

They’d rented one of the cabins on the inlet for a few days. The sense of tranquility here brought tears to Bobby Leighton’s eyes, and something inside him began to ease for the first time since his return from Iraq. He took a deep, solid breath and walked outside, still wearing his thick, down vest, pretty much needed in the early-March chill. But he’d wanted to come to this familiar spot so badly, and he used to hear a lot about winter casting for trout. His soul required the salve of white pines and hemlock, the unbroken expanse of quiet waters interrupted only by the occasional leaping of a solitary brookie.

Laura had gone down to the roadhouse they’d passed to pick up some supper. He could have driven her in the car, but she’d wanted to get a little exercise.

A small dark, woman came out from the cabin next door  and called out a neighborly `hello.’ In a couple of minutes, another woman emerged, and the two got into a Ford Escort and left.

A little too much time went by as he stood there, so Leighton locked their cabin and got in the Volvo to find his wife. He was feeling on the verge of peace, with months of death and destruction seeping from his every cell into the snow-white and branch-brown landscape. But the more the tension eased on out of him, the more he realized how acutely he’d been injured by the harsh and endless rat-tat-tat of M-16s and the earth-shattering sound of distant explosions.

Leighton pulled into the row of parking in front of Rak’s Tavern and got out. He hadn’t seen Laura along the highway, but she might have cut back across the field. He hoped she hadn’t. With ice and snow on the ground everywhere, walking could be treacherous.

Laura’s nearness, after all his months away, felt strange. Though her unwavering presence was a relief, Leighton remained uncertain about where they stood as a married couple. The recovery of a precious treasure mercilessly stolen didn’t remove completely the pervasive sense of loss and fear.

He opened the door and entered the winter-warmed space to. . . an assault on his eyes. Laura in the embrace of a rough-hewn country type, her hand either braced against him for support or pushing away. Leighton felt physically ill and wanted to throw up. He thrust the door open again, releasing it to a sharp, alarming bang. His voice had deserted him.

A bartender entered at once from the swinging door opposite.

Laura and the man separated and turned, and Laura rushed toward Leighton whose eyes remained on the stranger with the long, curling blond hair and single gold earring. A flaming heat shot through Leighton’s gut. He could either kill the guy right here and now, or simply leave. Laura reached out for Leighton’s arm and the pressure of her hand said she’d already made the choice for him—to simply go. Shaking with a fury akin to that he’d felt in a firefight Over There, he let her lead him away.

In the car, they didn’t speak and didn’t speak.

Finally, “He grabbed me,” she said. “The bartender wasn’t there right then.” She gulped in air. “He said some horrible things, and then he grabbed me,” she repeated. “It wasn’t my fault.” Laura started to cry.

 

* * * * *

 

Ralph Edwards found the body on the shoreline when he went down to check his launch. A bunch of kids had been messing around with the boat the last couple of weeks, and he was concerned. Seeing a bundle lying in the marsh, he figured the boys had left a load of garbage behind. When he got a little closer, however, Ralph saw the package of rags was a dead man. Not just a dead man, but Barney Dern. And Dern wasn’t merely nicely, politely dead. He was beaten and bloody, beaten to a pulp. Edwards gagged, then took the cell phone from his pocket to call the police. If Dern was dead, the murder was most likely justified. Everyone knew just what Dern was, and how he operated. That he’d made it this long without being jailed or taken out was some kind of miracle. Still, this sort of thing wasn’t good for tourism, which most everyone around here depended on for a living. Damn lucky that the killing had occurred off-season.

 

* * * * *

 

With a sweater, the down jacket, and a thick wool cap, Leighton was nearly comfortable standing along the edge of the lake, though he felt a little silly so duded up in all-new gear. He glanced over at Laura. As the years had passed, she’d become a better fisherman than he. She was a beautiful and valiant companion, but where lay her heart? Had it left him over the time he’d been away? Laura cast with the grace of one of the seraphim if such a heavenly creation might ever take to a bout of angling. She had quite an arm, and an eye. To keep a woman like this for himself would be any man’s singular ambition, worth any price.

That was when he heard a car along the lake shore road, and he snorted in reaction. Damn engine was bound to scare off any fish. When the vehicle crunched its way down the gravel, Leighton noted it was a black and white cop car. He wasn’t speeding, Leighton laughed to himself. No, thank God, even after the upset of yesterday afternoon, everything about him was still slowing down. He cast and listened to the line play out, while the cop extricated himself from behind the wheel and walked toward the water.

 

* * * * *

 

By twelve-thirty-five, Tom had his lunch eaten and his desk somewhat cleared. Afternoon was the best time for winter fishing, and he was set. Today’s bright sun would have warmed the air a bit and the fish might come up from the deep to nibble a midge. With so few clients wanting his lawyering skills that filling even the morning with work took imagination, Tom felt more than entitled to inflict a little revenge on the trout up at Silver Lake. Not that the coasters were to blame for his troubles; no, probably he was, himself, for being so smart and, worse than that, for showing it. Nobody in this neck of the woods liked a smartass.

He stepped out, into the reception area. “Maida, I’m going now,” he told his secretary, who raised her eyebrows, but didn’t make a move to stop him. As if she could--though probably she wanted to. Likely wanted to wring his neck, make him go out on the streets and court the citizenry to drum up some business. But not today. Today was a true-to-his-innards kind of day, a day to speculate on the nature of the universe, and to fish.

Directly in front of his door, however, he ran into Parnell, who was with a young woman. Parnell stopped Tom with a hand on his shoulder.

“Can’t now, Parnell. I’m off to the lake.” Tom’s eyes skipped across the woman—she was something—and onto his car, making sure it hadn’t disappeared. He’d come to an age when fishing was more important to him than the sight of a beautiful female, and he didn’t even think it sad.

“Wait a minute, Tom. This is your new client. I found her for you. Her husband was taken in for questioning as a person of interest in the murder last evening of Barney Dern. Someone beat Dern to death.” Parnell smiled. “Mrs. Leighton came to me and I’ve brought her to you.” The other lawyer puffed himself up like a man who’d just hooked a big one.

Now Tom took a minute and looked more closely at the girl. She was softly gorgeous and he could set forth the whole scenario right now. Dern had come on to her, molested her, maybe even committed a rape. And, finally, someone bigger and tougher than he had take Dern down and would be charged with murder for the trouble. Tom knew he’d find grounds on which he could appeal to any sane jurors. Especially local jurors who knew Dern. But if Tom ran off, choosing trout over duty, he’d leave behind a man to serve jail time. And maybe pass up a nice fat fee on a high-profile case that could remake Tom’s recently tarnished reputation.

“Okay,” Tom said. “Come into my office.” Maida would be happy now.

 

* * * * * 

 

“I didn’t do it. I did not do it,” insisted Lt. Robert Leighton, addressing Tom in the mold-encrusted space the sheriff had set aside for prisoner/attorney consultations.

Tom liked the man’s adamancy, which boded well. Not for an acquittal on the grounds that Leighton didn’t do it, but because everyone but Leighton himself knew the guy was guilty of the crime. Leighton had blanked the incident out apparently, or something the psychiatrists would explain in two days of testimony at the trial. They would blame the ardors of war for the killer’s mental state. The man was a hero. Six months of treatment in an institution and he’d be fine—and free.

“Okay, you got home with your wife from the bar. What happened next?”

“I slept,” said Leighton. “I lay down and took a nap.”

“A man had just assaulted your wife—that’s what the sheriff has from the bar owner, Rak-- and you go back to the cabin and go to sleep?”

“Yes,” said Leighton. “I was exhausted, completely worn out. I lay down and fell asleep.”

“And then?” asked Tom. Dern had been killed that night, after dark. He had assaulted Laura Leighton and then showed up dead. Funny, how things sometimes worked out that way.

“Nothing,” said Leighton. “Nothing happened. I went to sleep. That was it. We got up late the next morning, made breakfast, and went fishing. A little while later, I was arrested.”

“Okay,” said Tom. “Don’t worry about it. But if you think of anything else, tell whoever’s in front you want to see me. And if they try to question you again, demand your attorney.”

“Laura and I don’t have much money,” Leighton warned.

“That figures,” answered Tom as he stood up. Of course. What had he been thinking, anyway? That his luck was changing?

 

* * * * * 

 

Tom had waited to question Laura Leighton until after he’d talked with her husband, curious to first hear Leighton’s side of the story. Now he met with the woman in his office.  “Tell me about what happened yesterday,” he requested.

She crossed her legs and let out a throaty, weary sigh. “We got here about three-thirty in the afternoon, too late to fish after we checked in, with the sun already headed down.”

Tom nodded in agreement.

“But we’d driven for about three hours and I wanted to be outside for a while. So I walked back to the tavern that we’d passed….”

She told Tom pretty much what Leighton had already said, though a little reluctantly, either as if from embarrassment, or as if she wasn’t sure that Tom would believe her. He didn’t challenge anything she told him, even if eventually he’d have to. But now his mind was busy traveling here and there, thinking of how he could make the situation sound that much the worse--or really, that much better for the defendant.

“And then, when you got back to the cabin?” Through the partially open door, Tom could hear Maida clickclacking away at her computer. But how much work did she really have? She was out there listening and only pretending to be busy, was his guess. Maybe she’d come up with some good ideas for him later on. He nearly grinned, but caught himself.

“Bobby slept,” Laura said. “He slept for quite a while and I read. Then I took a bath. When I got out, he was awake. Said he was going to drive down the road and pick up some supper. A couple of minutes after that, he went out.”

That was interesting information, certainly not what her husband had indicated. “And when did he come back?” asked Tom.

She thought a minute, looked at her watch. “About three quarters of an hour… an hour later.”

“And he brought food?”

“Oh, yes,” answered Laura Leighton without hesitation. “We had a stove in the room, but he brought cold cuts. And eggs. Eggs for the morning. So we had sandwiches and went to bed.”

“What kind of a state was your husband in when he returned?

She seemed surprised by the question, as if she didn’t know why Tom would ask. “No state,” she answered. “He was fine.”

No state at all, after walking in that afternoon on his wife being molested. But Tom let that go. “He wasn’t disheveled or bloody?” Tom continued.

“No,” she objected. “Maybe he hadn’t combed his hair when he’d gone out, but he was fine.” She wrinkled her face a little bit and Tom wished the image in her head could be projected directly into his own.

 

* * * * *

 

Leighton had stopped at the Shop and Go two miles away. That was what was printed on the plastic bag, Laura reported when she called Tom from the motel a half hour later.

Tom told her not to worry and he hung up. Then he called the sheriff, wanting to know whether they were going to charge Leighton, or what. The sheriff was waiting to hear from the D.A., a fact that touched a still-raw nerve in Tom. The D.A. Tom had been the D.A. in this county for four years running, and he’d thought he’d be the D.A. for a long time more. But today he was just a another local ambulance chaser without enough clients to keep him in beer.

He drove out to the Shop and Go and looked around. He could see why Leighton had settled on cold cuts. He waited until the clerk was free.

“Can I help you, mister?” the clerk asked tensely.

Maybe the clerk thought that Tom had waited in order to rob him. Tom took his hands out of his pockets and placed them on the counter. He explained he was asking about the man who’d come in last night for the sandwich fixings.

“Oh, yes,” said the clerk. “Sure. About eight o’clock. He bought some eggs and butter, the olive loaf, some rye bread, and some Monterey Jack, plus a quart bottle of club soda.”

“You notice a lot,” Tom flattered him. “Anyone else in here then?”

He’d had other customers at the time, recalled the clerk. Two women who’d said hello to Leighton and a blond man with a gold earring buying some beer. Dern without a doubt, decided Tom, and the rest was history. But who were the women?

He questioned the clerk a little bit further, waited until a couple more shoppers were rung up and had left, and wound up giving the clerk a twenty dollar bill that Tom likely needed more than the clerk did.

Leighton had walked out, the girls had walked out, and then, finally, Dern.

Leighton had obviously stood outside until Dern had come out. Or maybe he’d stayed talking to the women. Or…

“Oh, yeah, something else,” the clerk said after Tom turned to go. “The car’s still outside. If you see the guy, can you ask him to get it?”

Tom was flummoxed. The car? If Tom saw the guy? 

“Whose car?” he asked.

“The blond guy’s car. The guy with the earring. I walked out later for a smoke and the car was still there.”

Dern had left his car at the Shop and Go? 

Tom went outside. He walked around the vehicle wondering if he was trampling on a crime scene. But he didn’t see any signs of something wrong. Had Dern gotten into Leighton’s car and left with him? The scenario didn’t quite click with Tom. He had to find out who the women were and talk to them.

 

* * * * *

 

As Tom was eating his own catch-as-catch-can dinner an hour later, his phone rang—Laura again, upset because Leighton didn’t remember picking up the cold cuts. Maybe he didn’t remember killing Dern.

Tom asked her if the couple knew anyone locally. The question didn’t compute for Laura until he mentioned two young women.

“Next door from Wisconsin,” suggested Laura. “They’re here for the week.

 

* * * * *

 

Both were slender and attractive: the one petite, the other medium height. The petite one, Marsha, pulled out the desk chair so Tom could sit down.

Tom glanced around the room. No fishing gear. “Why Michigan?” he asked. “Why not fly to the Caribbean?”

The smaller one smiled. “Just someplace not so expensive to get away to. We wanted to take a week and relax. We’re nurses in Milwaukee.”

“Did you see the man from next door in the Shop and Go yesterday night?” Tom was surprised at the degree of his anticipation. He could picture the whole sequence of events, but the way the women answered him now could be the key to the case. And the case, deftly handled, might remake Tom’s career.

Again, the smaller woman took the lead. “We saw him,” she acknowledged. “He bought a few things and then left.”

The eyes of the second girl were on her friend. She wet her lips and didn’t say a word. The women wouldn’t bother to protect a stranger, would they? Unless Leighton had helped them, had beaten off Dern in order to help them. Then they might feel they owed him something.

Maybe Dern had left with the women.

Tom pictured Leighton, having waited for Dern, driving after the car. Then perhaps Dern had compelled the girls to turn off and stop. Leighton, who’d followed, got out of his vehicle. Then Leighton pulled Dern out of the girls’ car, beating him to death. Not just because Leighton was angry over Dern’s assault on Laura, but perhaps also to protect the girls.

Tom dropped his head. He wasn’t the D.A. around here any more. He had no powers of enforcement and practically no livelihood, either. “Tell me what happened,” Tom begged humbly. “Unless I can find some grounds for the murder, he’s going to prison for the next 20 years.”

“Twenty years?” repeated Marsha. The words fell out of her mouth as a solid brick of time, the passage of a man’s life in a series of essentially undifferentiated days. Hard days. Long days.

“Depends on what you can give me,” Tom told her without embellishment.

“I killed him,” said the other, less assertive woman, the one whose name Tom hadn’t even tried to catch exactly.

His jaw dropped open. He didn’t know how to respond. He just looked at her with all the astonishment he still had to offer—which, apparently, was quite a lot.

“That’s right,” she said, almost proudly. “We saw the man from the next cabin in the store. At first he was friendly, but a minute later his eyes became glazed—you know, like from shock. Then he paid for what he got and left.”

Marsha had stopped trying to speak. Her attention was simply on her friend, who went on.

“We bought a few things a minute later, and then we left, too. We were joking about something when the blond man came out.” The second woman shrugged. “He told us he was having car trouble and asked for a lift. We didn’t want to be rude about it.”

She gave a short, self-mocking laugh.

Dern had gotten rough with them and told them when to exit the highway. At one point, Marsha, who had been driving, had pressed down on the horn, and Dern had punched her. Then, yes, he made them stop the car.

“My dad’s a fireman,” the taller woman said. “I have four brothers.”

While Dern was busy struggling with Marsha,  the second woman had gotten out, opened the trunk, and had taken out the tire iron.

“I was careful,” she added. “I didn’t want to crack you on the head,” she told Marsha. The two women smiled at one another wryly.

Once she’d gotten him down on the ground by himself, she’d hit the man several more times. Probably both women had kicked him in frustration and rage.

“He was dead,” said Marsha. “By then he was dead. We checked his pulse. He couldn’t have been saved, so we left him there.”

“We didn’t mean for someone else to get in trouble for it,” the second woman said. “We didn’t know…”

Leighton would never be charged now, and Tom was thinking. This case against the women could be a whole lot easier than the one against Leighton, though not as reputation-building in terms of a win. But maybe, as nurses, they had something they could put down, as a retainer.

“Don’t worry,” said Tom. “We’ll straighten this out. If you want to hire me…”

“Of course,” said Marsha at once. “Of course.”

And when the girls were back in Milwaukee on bail, Tom could take the odd afternoon to go out to the lake.

                                      

                                  

 

Copyright © 2009

by G. Miki Hayden