Jason Deas - Benny James 03 - Brushed Away (19 page)

“Thanks to you, I’m about to have PR 101 with Rachael.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I didn’t say thank you.”

“You’ll thank me later.”

“I doubt it.”

“You’ll be great—talk to you later.”

Benny hung up and pulled into the kid’s driveway. His mother was sitting in the carport smoking a cigarette.

“Is this all you do?” Benny joked, getting out of his car.

She didn’t think it was funny.

“No. Sometimes I drink vodka while I smoke.”

Benny wasn’t sure if she was humoring him or not.

“I need to borrow your son, if that’s OK.”

“You can have him for all I care,” she said, deadpan.

“I imagine he’s shooting imaginary people in his room?”

She nodded as she took a drag on her cigarette.

Benny found the kid in his room doing just as he expected. Benny cleared his throat to announce his presence. The kid turned.

“You’re not going to kick the door in this time?”

“Very funny. It’s time to pay the piper, kid.”

“Fine.”

“Let’s go for a ride. Bring your cell phone. The call needs to come from your phone. I’m sure he has caller ID.”

Once inside the Jeep, Benny told the kid the rules.

“Here’s how you earn the envelope full of cash I gave you,” Benny started. “First of all, you will never, ever, speak of this to anyone. Not even me again. After you make the call and hang up, it never happened.”

“You already paid me, and I already put the money in my bank account,” the kid said, looking smug.

“How would you like to use that money to fix your broken windshield and your broken taillights? Maybe a slashed tire or two?”

“I don’t have a broken… oh,” the kid said catching on. “I won’t say a word to anyone.”

“Good, because I’m not kidding. You ever smashed a windshield out of a car with a baseball bat?”

“No.”

“It feels so good. I’ve been looking for a reason to have that feeling again.”

“I said I wouldn’t talk about it.”

“Perfect. Here’s how the call is going to go,” Benny said pulling the Jeep into a vacant lot and shutting off the engine.”

He explained what he wanted to happen, trying to cover all the things that could possibly come up. The point he tried to drive home the hardest was for the kid to stay vague and let Big E do most of the talking.

The kid placed the call.

“What do you want?” Big E answered. “I told you that you could come back to work tomorrow.”

“I just had a really weird visitor come to my house,” the kid started.

“And why would I care?”

“It was an FBI agent and he was asking questions about you.”

“What?”

The kid now had Big E’s undivided attention.

“Yeah, I told you it was weird.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“He kept asking me about two things.”

Benny gave the kid a signal to pause.

“What two things? What?” There was hysteria in his voice.

Benny nodded and held up one finger.

“First of all the guy kept asking me about the missing cooler. He said that a guy was found dead inside the cooler.”

Big E didn’t say anything.

“I passed a lie detector about it. I told them I didn’t have anything to do with the missing cooler. I passed.”

Benny gave the kid a gesture and a look saying he was off script. The kid gave him a little grin and a shrug of his own.

“Don’t worry about the cooler. I guess you didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Benny noticed Big E didn’t apologize. As Benny held his head close to the phone, almost head to head with the kid he could also tell by Big E’s voice that the cooler issue wasn’t striking a chord. He held up two fingers signaling the kid to move on to the second topic they had previously discussed.

“The second thing they wanted to know about was your dirty boat.”

“Oh, son of a …” Big E’s voice whimpered and trailed off. The kid had struck a chord.

The kid started to speak and Benny held his hand over the kid’s mouth and shook his head back and forth.

“What do they know?” Big E pleaded.

“The guy just kept asking me if I knew anything about your dirty boat. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I didn’t know anything about a dirty boat. What should I tell him if he comes back and asks again?”

Benny gave the kid a thumbs up.

“Did they say boat or boats? Think hard and try to remember.”

Benny had a paper and pen ready. He quickly wrote boat on the paper.

“Boat.”

“OK. Good.” Benny heard relief in the two simple words.

“Thanks for the heads-up.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Let me ask you one more thing,” Big E said. “Did he say anything about a guy named Ned?”

Benny’s eyes shot wide open.

Chapter 24

Chief Neighbors watched as Rachael put on makeup for the news conference. Vernon had gone home to take a shower and to change clothes.

“You’re drooling, Charles,” Rachael said, eyeing him in the mirror.

It wasn’t a figure of speech. Chief Neighbors wiped away the moisture from under his lip.

“Sorry,” he said.

“No you’re not.”

“Can I ask you for some advice?”

Rachael turned around. “That depends on if it’s appropriate or not.”

“It’s appropriate,” Chief Neighbors promised, “but you can’t tell Benny or Vernon.”

“This sounds like a slippery slope.”

“I assure you it’s not.”

“How about we do this,” Rachael suggested. “You start, and if you cross the line or begin to talk about anything that I won’t be able to keep secret, I will tell you to stop.”

“Fair enough. Jane called this morning.”

“Jane as in your and Benny’s ex-wife? That Jane?”

“Yeah. That Jane.  She wants me back.

“Again?”

“Yeah.”

“Hasn’t she learned?”

“She’s willing to give me one more chance.”

Rachael turned back to the mirror, mascara pen in hand. She shot him a quizzical look. “Can you?”

“I do love her.”

“That’s not what I asked. Are you physically and mentally able to be with just one woman for the rest of your life?”

Chief Neighbors didn’t answer the question. “She wants me to move to Arizona. She says I’d love it there.”

Rachael turned around again. “Move?”

“Yeah. She thinks it would be good for me. I was born and raised in this town. The farthest I’ve ever been from here is Louisiana. She said I wouldn’t have to work if I didn’t want to and we could travel to all the places we talked about when we were young. She thinks that now we’re older it might work.”

Rachael wanted desperately to advise him to go. It would solve the problem of Vernon running against him in the next election, but her morals wouldn’t allow her to do such a thing.

“I wish I could tell you what you want to hear,” Rachael said, turning back to the mirror. “If I have to be deadly honest with you though, I’m going to have to say, from my vantage point it looks like it would be a mistake. I don’t think you would be able to stay faithful, and haven’t you already put that poor woman through enough?”

The Chief pulled at his mustache.

“When I left for that gig in London I was all messed up thinking of nothing more than my career. It only took me two days to realize once I was there that I had made the worst mistake of my life. It’s not the money that matters in life. It’s not the stature or the accolades. It’s the people. Without the special people in your life none of it means anything.”

“You may be right,” Chief Neighbors said, as his eyes focused on the parking lot. “Vernon just pulled up.” He walked toward the front window and peered outside. “Look at all the media vans out there. I dare say there might be more than the time I went on television with you.” He paused as he remembered. “I was pretty amazing.”

Rachael laughed at his lack of modesty. “You
were
pretty fantastic. Here comes Vernon. I hope you make the right decision about Jane. And don’t worry; your secret is safe with me.”

“Thanks. Should we hug it out?” Chief Neighbors asked with a suggestive wink.

“No, but nice try.” Rachael gave him a wink of her own.

When Vernon walked in the door, Rachael knew instantly that the news conference and interview would be fine. She had been in the media business long enough to recognize the look of someone who was scared to death of the camera versus someone who was confident in their self and capable of ignoring the thought of hundreds of thousands of eyes upon them.

“You look great,” Rachael said.

“I feel great. So how’s this going to go?”

“We set up a podium outside like you would see at most normal news conferences. I also set up two chairs so we can sit and have an interview like I used to do on my show. I know it’s not the way most news conferences go, but that’s one of the things I like most about this town—you all don’t always do things the normal way.”

“You know you can start saying ‘we’ when you talk about Tilley.”

“What do you mean?”

“You just said, ‘
you all
don’t always do things the normal way.’ You can start saying
we
don’t always do things the normal way.”

Rachael realized what Vernon was saying. “Thank you, Vernon. That means a lot to me.” Rachael looked at her watch. “Five minutes and we need to get out there.”

“When I was in town today I could tell people were pretty frightened. Don’t you think this has the possibility of making it worse?”

“No. I guarantee that a lot of the information out there isn’t true. It’s our job to let people know the truth. If the truth is scary—so be it, but they have the right to know.”

“I just don’t want to make things harder on everybody by scaring them.”

Chief Neighbors walked to Vernon and clapped him on the back. “You’ll do fine. You’re working with a real pro here,” he said, nodding his head Rachael’s way. “I was pretty nervous when I did the national TV show a few years back, but once we got going it was like it was just the two of us talking. She led me in all the right directions.”

“Thanks, Charles,” Rachael said, “and that’s exactly what it is—just the two of us talking.”

Rachael and Vernon simultaneously looked at their watches.

“You ready?” she asked.

“Let’s do it.”

Rachael walked to the podium at exactly seven o’clock. The media waited.

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen,” she began. “I would like to thank each and every one of you for attending tonight and waiting patiently for the Tilley Police Department to formally address the situation. I would like to introduce myself and tell you my role in this matter. My name is Rachael Martin. In the past I have had the opportunity to work as a journalist for a few different networks. I may have had the pleasure of working with some of the people present here this evening. I have taken on a temporary role as public relations director for the Tilley Police Department.”

Rachael paused momentarily for the information to be processed.

“This evening I am accompanied by Officer Vernon Kearns.” Rachael looked at Vernon and he nodded. “Officer Kearns has been with the Tilley force for almost fifteen years. He has an exemplary record. You might remember reading about him during the last case that put Tilley, Georgia on the map, as he was an integral part of the investigation. Mr. Benny James has told me many times that the case may not have been solved if it weren’t for the dedication and insight of Officer Kearns.”

A local standing behind the hoard of media gave Vernon a rowdy rebel yell.

“Tilley, Georgia is not the kind of place where this sort of thing is supposed to happen. Life is slower in Tilley. People are friendlier. We do things different in Tilley, Georgia.”

Rachael looked at Vernon and winked as she used the word “we.”

“We’re going to do this news conference differently too. I can guarantee that this is the first and will probably be the last news conference you attend that will be carried out in this fashion. I am going to interview Officer Kearns like I would have on my television show. Please welcome, Officer Vernon Kearns.”

Rachael began clapping. The television crews, newspaper writers, radio people, bloggers, and all in attendance were not sure what to do as this was most definitely a first. The first claps came from the back. A few more scattered through the middle of the crowd and before long it grew into boisterous applause. Rachael and Vernon sat down.

“Thank you for agreeing to do this, Officer Kearns,” Rachael began smiling deep into his eyes.

“It’s my absolute pleasure. Thank you for asking.”

“I would like to start by addressing the grave nature of the situation at hand. From speaking to you earlier I can tell you care deeply about all the people who live here.”

“I do. I’m a police officer and protector, but I’m also more than that. People here call me friend and neighbor, and I don’t like to see my friends and neighbors worried.”

“Where are you in the investigation?”

“We’re making progress every hour. I’m doing everything in my power to solve this case as fast as my department can so my friends and neighbors can get back to their normal lives. You mentioned Mr. Benny James earlier, the department has hired him to assist. I think most people know the experience he brings from the FBI. He has an incredible talent for solving tough crimes. As we speak he is following up on a lead we received earlier today.”

“He said some very complimentary things about your talents earlier when we spoke.”

“He’s very kind.”

“Let’s get into the specifics of the case,” Rachael suggested.

Vernon settled in and it was just as the Chief said it would be, just two people talking. And a couple million people watching on television. In Tilley and across the nation, Vernon had his coming out party.

Chapter 25

The next morning Rachael was gone when Benny woke at a few minutes after eight, which was a couple hours before he preferred. He was worried about Ned. He missed the previous evening’s news conference trying to track him down.