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A local news crew showed up around ten. A young, pixie-haired blonde jogged up to me, her heels sinking into the overturned red dirt, giving her a lubberly masculine gait that didn’t fit the suit. She shoved a microphone in my face. A freckle-faced redhead hovered close behind with a camera perched on his shoulder.
“Mr. Cohen, I understand you were the last person to see Sylvia Stone alive, is this true?”…“Mr. Cohen, did you two have a love affair? I heard she was pregnant with your child—can you confirm this?”…“Where did those scratches on your face come from? Did you hurt her?”
I remained deliberately silent, mechanically swinging the shovel up, down, up, down, imagining her bright red mouth under each stab into the earth.
Eventually the owner of the liquor store got fed up with the crowds, who were now blocking his drive-thru, and the cops were called.
Two black and whites pulled up to the curb just as the Cohen’s Cupcakes burst onto the scene, proclaiming my innocence, declaring their love for the wrongly accused. One particularly burly woman with a tattoo that read, simply,BEANS, written across her left breast, punched a naysayer in the mouth.
All hell broke loose.
And this, I decided, was the perfect diversion.
33
Rhett
Idrop my shovel and sprint into the woods that line the construction site. I can hearBEANSscreaming at someone to “come at her again, bruh” as the war rages behind me.
I don’t stop until I am out of sight from prying eyes, sneaking down a narrow alleyway behind a row of brick buildings on the town square.
After a quick look over my shoulder, I slide into the back door of Hammer Time, a tiny hardware shop squeezed in between the courthouse and the diner.
A bell rings as I open the door and the owner sees me immediately. He jerks his chin to the office, giving me the okay.
He’s not surprised to see me, I note, and I find a bit of comfort in that.
William Sandler and I were old classmates, graduated together. Billy, he is called, was my partner in shop class and the two of us bonded over woodwork. He’d spotted me at the construction site a few days ago while in line at the liquor store. The six-foot-four former lineman—now the size of a refrigerator—parked his dually, got out, and strode over to me with a crooked grin. He looked almost the same, add fifty pounds and thick black beard that covers almost his entire face.
Billy spoke to me like a real human, treated me like an old friend, not like a dangerous ex-convict, like everyone else did. After a brief catch-up, Billy patted me on the back and told me if I ever got into trouble, I could come to his shop.
Well, Billy, this qualifies as trouble, my old friend.
I look around the small office which is cluttered with two dozen boxes of tools, some stacked dangerously tall, others opened, half their contents spilled onto a stained concrete floor. A simple metal desk sits in the corner. It’s tiny and I imagine my old friend looks comical sitting behind it. The Incredible Hulk squeezing behind a kindergartener’s desk. The walls are barren, not a single picture hung anywhere, a passive aggressive announcement of the man’s lack of family. This doesn’t surprise me. Billy was a troublemaker back then, and much like Stroud, wasn’t the type to change his ways.
When I started my company at nineteen, I’d actually considered hiring Billy. But then the rowdy redneck got arrested for drunk driving and possession. (Of what was never revealed). Months earlier he’d been arrested for stealing money from his grandmother’s purse. She’d called the cops. Big family drama, big town gossip.
Needless to say, I decided against a business partnership.
I pace the tiny room, back and forth, back and forth, not knowing what to do but grateful I’m no longer out in the public getting screamed at. It is exactly nine steps from one wall to the other. Eighteen, there and back. Thirty-six, two complete pivots.
I listen to my old friend engage a customer, crack a joke, sell a wrench.
About forty-five minutes later, Billy comes into the office, a cup of coffee in each hand.
He offers one to me.
“Thanks.” I take the styrofoam cup from his monstrous hand, sip, move to the corner of the room so not to crowd his space.
“I take it you saw the news,” he says, weaving around the boxes to his desk. His flannel shirt catches on the tip of a hammer poking out of a box, momentarily revealing a holster clipped to his belt.
“No,” I say, “haven’t caught the news in a few days.”
Billy frowns, “No? What brings you here, then?” He sinks into the small, plastic chair that bows under his weight.
“The crowds. I had to get away. They came to the construction site…” I shake my head, realizing how embarrassed I am. Humiliated to be the center of attention—again.I want to scream from the mountaintops for everyone to just leave me alone.
“It’s because of the news…” he says over the rim of his coffee cup.
