Not in the Heart (5 page)

C
HAPTER
6

Oleta called with the number for former detective Sawyer, who was now a private investigator and probably chased divorce cases. That's what I assumed when I heard his voice mail for “Sawyer Investigative Services.” I left a message and felt glad he wasn't in. I couldn't focus on the story or the book, and I told myself I needed this release. I needed the inner demons exorcised. And I needed to take the $15,000 in my pocket and turn it into $50,000. I'd done something like that in college, back when I could quit when I was winning, but in recent trips I hadn't been as successful. I promised myself if I made it to $30K, I would walk away.

I figured Jacksonville was safely out of Mickey's territory. There had been a floating casino that went belly-up a year or two before, but that was replaced by another cruise ship under different ownership with a catchy name and top-of-the-line accommodations. Every one of these places had nice-looking women at the front welcoming you with that breath-of-fresh-air feeling that you were in a place built for beautiful people. I knew there were usually two cruises each day and the evening one left around seven. Since traffic was light, I made it before they set sail. Lucky me.

I quickly changed my cash for poker chips and headed toward the tables, stretching my legs. My ticket paid for food and a few drinks, though I made a point of not mixing business with pleasure. And when I sit down at a table, it's all business.

My phone rang a couple of times, but I don't take calls when I'm in the zone. I silenced it so it only vibrated, but even that was a distraction. In the first few hands I'd made several hundred dollars and the old mojo was back. Just like I'd experienced in those early years at college when I turned my father's insurance money into tuition, rent, and an old Toyota with enough miles to reach the moon. My heart raced; the endorphins pumped; my mind was fully alive. It was like reporting from a fully engaged battlefield.

Then the mojo left. Fast.

With only an hour left on the cruise, twinkling stars reflecting on the water, I had lost all but a handful of poker chips. Funny, I had planned when to stop if I won, but not when to stop if I was losing. I cashed in the chips and lost that money at the slots. As I said, I never play the slots, and for good reason. About the only thing I took away from the boat was a charge for my cell phone. Not a good return on a $15K investment, but there it is. In previous excursions I had lost more than that. My worst night . . . I don't think about my worst night.

It's hard to describe the compulsion to someone who has never experienced it. It's like when the carnival barker gives you three darts to pop two balloons, and you can't stop buying darts because all you can think of is that other balloon and how easy it will be to take the big doll home if you just spend two more dollars on another dart. Only I wasn't spending dollars, I was spending thousands, which made the high even better. The bigger the risk, the more adrenaline, the better the feeling, the greater the rush.

Those looking in at my life from the outside would say I've seen it all. They're right. With my experiences in war zones, disasters, calamities, mudslides, earthquakes, all the loss of life and devastation, I'd say I've seen too much. Most envy living on the edge, sucking the marrow from life, but that's romanticizing my travels. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm not thinking of the exotic locations or international celebrities I've interviewed. I think of events I've witnessed and tried to describe. Spaces of time that have numbed me to the core.

A good friend accompanied me to the interior of Africa, flying in a small plane and driving over unimaginable roads. It could have been any year, any decade, you pick the famine. I wore plastic gloves and the three-year-old child I held weighed not much more than a newborn back in the States. I don't know how he'd made it that long. His ribs were draped with a thin layer of skin and his pulse lightly flickered at his neck. His breath was as shallow as a bird's, deep brown eyes as wide as the coastline and searching. He just stared at me as I did my stand-up in front of the camera, and when I looked down at him, right before I said the tagline with my name and the network's signature, I noticed there was no movement on his neck and his pupils were fixed.

I finished my report and handed him to the aid worker nearby and threw up in a trench. That was the second time I'd stared death in the face. The effects have lasted.

That's what greets me in the middle of the night when I awaken. And it's part of the reason why writing Terrelle Conley's story didn't hold the allure it might once have. I've seen the eyes of men and children about to die, and I didn't relish seeing another set.

If you want to know, I don't gamble for fun. I don't use it to pass time. Gambling is something that makes me
feel
. It's nerve on nerve rather than the dull plodding that passes for the rest of my life. Food has lost its allure. Even sex has lost its edge.

I found the Sequoia and sat inside, trying to descend from the high and realizing what I'd just done. It would take a long time to deal with this guilt. So I decided to use my time wisely and at least check my messages.

“Tru, where are you?” Ellen said. Her voice was tight and edgy, like she thought I might be at a casino. “I need the car to get a change of clothes at the house. I thought maybe you could give me a break here for an hour or so. Call me. Would you?”

I checked the time stamp, then my watch. Not good. It was early morning now and a good three-hour drive to the hospital. I tried to formulate some kind of cover story about working on the book or doing research or getting lost in the writing and losing track of time as the next message played.

“This is Dennis Sawyer,” the man said with more than a hint of a Chicago accent. “You called about the Conley case. I got plenty to tell you. Call me.”

I put my head back. I needed sleep. I reached for the keys and noticed movement outside. Someone pecked on the glass and motioned for me to roll down the window. The guy was silhouetted in the lights above and wore a hooded sweatshirt. All I could see of his face was a handlebar mustache and a sick grin.

I'm used to winos and the homeless stopping me. I have no problem giving them a few bucks, but I wasn't in the mood and all the cash I had was on the boat.

“Sorry, pal; I'm tapped out.”

The man banged the window with the bottom of his hand and it ticked me off. I made a gesture of goodwill to him with one of my fingers and started the car. In the rearview I noticed a vehicle that was little, loud, and expensive blocking my exit. To my left, a glint of light flashed off the chrome of a silver tire iron. Glass shattered and scattered onto my lap and into the front seats.

Call it a reporter's intuition, but my gut told me this was not good. The mojo was definitely gone.

C
HAPTER
7

28 DAYS BEFORE EXECUTION

I was asleep in the hospital waiting room when Ellen found me. She shook me awake.

“When I take your hand, I'll watch my heart set sail.”
The words of the Marc Cohn tune came back as I looked at her face. Waking up to see her did something inside, like the old days when we'd wake up in each other's arms. Why had I abandoned this beautiful creature? Why had I chosen this path?

“Truman, what happened?”

I'd played out the conversation on my way back to Tallahassee with the wind in my face—not that I had a choice to have wind in my face.

“Have you had that treated?” she said.

Another hospital bill was the last thing I needed. “I'm fine; it's just a scratch.” Of course I could still taste the blood in my mouth from that scratch, but then it was easy to spit it out the window that wasn't there. I didn't know how to tell her about her car, but I'd stopped at a self-serve car wash and vacuumed all the glass from the seats. Like a cat, I like to keep my living space clean.

She touched the goose egg under my eye and the bandage over the gash in my cheek. “This is going to get infected. You need stitches. Was it a car accident?”

I shook my head.
Note to self: don't shake your head when you have a hole in your cheek.
“I got jumped. Guy with a tire iron.”

“A carjacking?”

“They didn't get your car, but they left you without a driver's-side window.”

There. I said it. She was too focused on the wound to worry about her car, which was a good thing. My first question would have been about the car. I hoped I could use her selfless concern to divert her from the truth. That a couple of Mickey's goons had tracked me down to a casino boat and were trying to extract a payment. But I had fooled them and lost everything before they showed up. Serves them right. Perhaps it wasn't Mickey's goons. Maybe his tentacles didn't reach that far. Didn't really matter, but I still wondered.

The crashed glass and the gash on the face were only the beginning, of course. A warning. And if the Marine who had just gotten back from Afghanistan hadn't been there, no telling what else would have happened. This was the guy who had won about $5K of my money at the poker table. After the little car with the big price tag sped away, the man offered to call the police but I waved him off. I didn't want the police involved. He drove me to Walgreens and poured a whole bottle of hydrogen peroxide on my cheek as I listened to it bubble and fizz. The Betadine stained my white shirt and shorts, but the way he bandaged the open wound made me think he'd done this before on the battlefield. He used a knife from his boot to cut strips and pulled the skin on my cheek tighter than a drum. It felt weird but didn't look half-bad in the rearview.

“What did those guys want?” the Marine said. I found out he was from Alabama and that he had a hard time sleeping. The boat helped calm his nerves. Didn't hurt his bank account either.

“I assume they wanted money,” I said to him. “I should have sent them your way—you have all of mine.”

He laughed and shoved a hundred-dollar bill in my shirt pocket, the one with Betadine all over it. If the boat had been open, I would have gone back.

“Did they get the money?” Ellen said. “You didn't cash all of Oleta's check, did you?”

I have scruples. Maybe about a handful. I don't out-and-out lie to my wife, even if divorce is a possibility. “It's all gone.” Technically that was telling the truth.

“Did you file a report?” she said through her hands. I could tell from the tone of voice that she suspected something. Maybe this was why I had abandoned this beautiful creature. She could read me better than I could read the morning paper.

“I'm talking with a detective this morning.” Another subtle piece of information that would ease her mind but not necessarily give her the truth.

“Where did this happen? Were you just driving along the street?”

I winced, though it was more from the pain of not being able to think of the answers I had planned. Sleep had clouded my mind. I said something about driving around, thinking about the Conley case, drinking coffee (which was true), and getting lost in the story.

“You need to go to the emergency room right now.” She grabbed my arm as if it were a fait accompli.

I waved her off. “I'm meeting Sawyer in half an hour. I just wanted you to know I'm sorry I wasn't able to spell you yesterday. How's Aiden?”

That took her aback. “He made it through another night. His vitals have stabilized.”

“So he's going to pull through.”

This time her eyes betrayed her. She dipped her head. “I keep thinking that his only hope is in death.”

I thought she meant the sweet-by-and-by, Jesus-in-the-clouds kind of thing Christians sing and talk about, which is part of my problem with the leap of faith. Jumping into the darkness of death for your hope in this life is not my idea of a good way to live. I would rather hope in something I taste and feel and experience.

Then she surprised me.

“I feel guilty about what has to happen in order for him to live. Someone else has to die. That doesn't feel fair, even if God provides a heart.”

“Kind of like people praying for a clear day for their picnic while the farmer prays for rain,” I said.

She gave me that quizzical look. There was probably some verse, some pearl of wisdom I could say to calm her heart and send her into my arms. Unfortunately for me, all I could think to say was “It's the circle of life.”

My wife was not into
Lion King
theology.

“Look, after I meet with this detective, I'll come give you a break,” I said. “You can take the car and—”

“I got a ride to the house from a friend at church. I'm fine.”

Great. These church people were everywhere.

My cell phone alarm rang and the sound made my head feel like an inferno. My eyes burned from too little sleep, and my mind went from the $15K I had lost to those hooded men to the hospital billing department. If they knew I was in the lobby, they'd probably send nurses in hooded sweatshirts to pummel me with bedpans.

“I want to do this for you,” I said. “When I get back, you take the rest of the day and do whatever you need. Go to a bookstore. Go to a movie. I'll stay with him. I'll work on the book while he's sleeping and check out the hospital food.”

“I can't leave him,” she said, but there was some light that came into her face and it wasn't just the sun trying to get through the heavy shades in the lobby.

“I need some time alone with him,” I said. “Just him and me. It's been too long.”

“I know he'll really like that, Tru. He mentioned you again last night when he woke up.”

“So prepare me. How does he look?”

“I feel like I need to prepare him for what
you
look like.”

I grinned and it felt like the Joker had taken a knife to my cheek and opened the smile a little wider, like back to my ear. Of all the things I needed right then, an estranged wife who made me smile was not one of them.

“He's lost a lot of weight,” she said. “His color is off. His eyes are dead and lifeless most of the time. It's hard for me to see it because I've been so close to it for so long. Friends come and see him and act concerned because of the change, but it's been gradual.”

But will be terrifying to someone like me who hasn't seen his son in months. That's what she was saying.

“The heart is mysterious,” she continued. “Everything in the body depends on it and we take it for granted.”

“He's going to get through this. Ten years from now, this will all be a bad dream.”

I reached out to touch her hand and she pulled back. She tried to mask the instinctive move, but my observational powers are superior to those of mere humans.

“Do you want to get something to eat in the cafeteria?” she said.

As hungry as I was, I imagined the pain of chewing Cap'n Crunch with my loose molars and it felt like torture. “I'd better hold off on that. Expect me back before noon, okay?”

She nodded and stood. “And get that looked at, Tru.”