The Summer of Last Resort

THE SUMMER OF LAST RESORT

- The Summer of Last Resort -

ACT I : Jake

“Everything is chemistry...”

Detective Jake Sullivan looked out the window of his office in the police station in Santa Fe and scowled at the rain that was just now starting to splatter his window with fat droplets that kicked up the desert dust. Outside you could smell the thirsty earth as it was sated by the fresh downpour of an early Fall, and Jake’s hand went absent-mindedly to the pack of cigarettes in his jacket pocket, and he thought about taking another smoke break, but resisted the temptation. He sighed, wishing that people could still smoke at their desks, and then looked down at the manila folder lying on top of his worn, grey metal desk, and then back up at the investigating officer’s report on his computer screen, but he found it harder and harder to concentrate. The beige machine perched awkwardly on his desk like an uninvited guest, its blinking cursor insistently reminding him to get his report finished.

“Jake, Jake, what the hell is wrong with you?” – he looked up just as a little paper triangle bounced off his monitor and smacked him in the forehead.

It was Sandy McGregor, one of the detectives that was also from out of town. She was one of the few other cops he felt comfortable around, maybe because they both hadn’t intended to work there, and maybe because she wasn’t quite so familiar with the shirts upstairs. Hell, she was supposed to be his superior! She furrowed her brow at him and then slowly folded up another sheet of paper, carefully forming it into smaller and smaller triangles, and then tucked in the corner to make a tidy little paper pillow. She looked at him carefully, and then balanced the little paper “football” on one of its corners on her desk, then, place-holding it with the index finger of one hand, she flicked it right over his head with a swift “kick” of the index finger of the other hand.

“Is that how you score on all the guys?” Jake asked sarcastically.

“Better be careful, smart guy,” she replied. “But seriously, what’s going on? A hood like Johnny Dimarino turns up dead in some drainage ditch – a guy like that snooping around here’s gonna definitely attract some attention.”

“Don’t I know it,” Jake replied, and then, looking around, “Let’s go for a smoke break.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Well, you can always start,” he replied, and got up and headed for the door, and Sandy grabbed her raincoat and they headed out the door together.

The rain was really coming down now, as it does when it rains in the Southwest, and they quickly made their way around the stark grey concrete building and back to the small loading dock which had the only shelter around. The rain beat a din against the metal roofing and the water gurgled and gushed down the downspouts and made a mess all over the asphalt paving.

“It’s hard to believe that a week ago it was 110,” Sandy said, yelling above the din.

“Uh—right”, Jake replied.

“Do you think it’s gonna wash out the evidence?” Sandy asked, and Jake turned and looked carefully at her. She looked pretty damn good for a detective, he thought. She was tall, as tall as he was, but with deep penetrating blue eyes and long, golden hair that she kept neatly ponytailed up. What the hell was he doing here, with this case? To take his mind off the case, and her, Jake fumbled in his pocket for the cigs and his lighter, and slowly tapped one out, and, gently holding it between his two chubby fingers, lit it before continuing.

“Yeah, but I don’t think that they’d find anything,” he replied. “A guy like Johnny Dimarino, someone who knocks him off’s not gonna leave a lot behind. So, I don’t think it matters. As long as we get the forensics on the body.”

“So, what’s the story, ace? It doesn’t sound like he’s one of our locals”

“No – he’s big out on the coast - from Seattle and down all the way to S.F.”

“So... he’s here looking for someone?”

“Yeah – or someone’s looking for him.”

“I guess they found him.”

“No shit. You figured that out all by yourself?” Jake teased, and Sandy smiled back at him and punched him in the arm.

“Look,” Jake continued, “The boys upstairs are pretty hot on this one. It’s really weird. I don’t know if you should know more than that.”

“Oh, come on, Jake. It’s not like I haven’t worked in the (she used air quotes here) ‘big city’ before.” She paused as one of the office staffers came out for a smoke. They exchanged pleasantries, and Sandy excused herself to go back to work, leaving Jake to contemplate this strange case, while the rain slowly tapered off to a grey mist, leaving the ground steaming.

Johnny Dimarino’s body had been unceremoniously dumped about a half hour outside of town after having been shot, execution style. Some power company guy had found the body and Jake had driven out highway 84 and spent half the day looking for a utility truck only to figure out later that it was the guy’s day off, and by the time Jake showed up, the highway patrol guys and a couple other folks from his own office had already been there and finished the interviews and secured the crime scene. There wasn’t much to see anyway, just a dead guy face down in a ditch with the back of his head missing and his jacket ripped with bullet holes and caked with dirt and blood. No one saw anything, or new anything, of course.

The ID had come in about a day later from prints; the coroner’s report told him nothing that his own eyes couldn’t see. But then things got a little interesting; people started calling and wanting to know why was Johnny down there? They wanted to know why we hadn’t rounded up the rest of his gang, figured out what sort of deal was going down, shaken down our locals for information.
Jesus,
Jake thought, this was just the sort of thing that he’d left SanFran to avoid. The one thing that they did have was a journal that some college kid had kept that summer and somehow he’d been mixed up with Johnny, but it just didn’t make any sense. This kid was boringly clean. He’d been picked up in Denver on a traffic stop, no id, and then got tagged on a FBI list. Now the feds were poking their prissy east coast noses around and telling everyone what to do. But they didn’t know anything more than anyone else.

A few days later, with little progress on the case, Jake felt even more dejected than before, until he noticed a little paper football stuck in among his papers. There was a little arrow on it that pointed to a fold. Then, when he unfolded that, another arrow pointed inwards, and so forth. Jake looked around furtively, a bit embarrassed, and then carefully unfolded the rest of the paper with no one seeing. “Call me if you want to talk” is all it said, along with a number. Jake quietly folded the paper and stuffed it into his pants pocket just in time to see his boss, detective Lou Smith, summoning him from his office.

“OK Jake, I’ll level with you. I don’t know why the boys upstairs think you’ve got it in you to take this case, but hey, it’s their neck, and yours – not mine.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Jake asked nervously.

“Well, maybe they feel, a guy like you, whose, well, got lots of experience out of town, maybe you’ve got some experience with something as weird as this.”

“You mean those files on those kids?”

“Young adults, Jake.”

“Okay. Young adults. College kids – well, not all of them were gonna go to college. So what makes you think they had anything to do with this?”

“Denver picked up one of them, this Shane kid, and he’s obviously the ringleader. He’s got motive and ability. There’s your perp right there!”

“What did they pick him up for?”

“Well, that’s not too clear.”

“Are you sure he’s not just being set up?”

“Does it really matter?”

Fuck you,
Jake thought to himself, but held his tongue.

“Anyhoo – they let him go, dumb fucks, but had kept a journal, dumb fuck, and we have that journal.”

“And the other files?” Jake asked about the other folders.

“Yeah, well there was this journal, see, and they found papers in the perp’s.. I mean, suspect’s car. Just see if you can make something of it, Jake. It’s all there. You just have to fill in the blanks.”

Jake could taste a hint of blood from biting his lip, but he contained himself and turned and left the office without slamming the door – this time. He slumped down into his desk, and then nodded forwards until his forehead rested on the stack of papers on the desk. Then he rocked back and forth, softly beating his head on the desk, then a bit harder, until suddenly he became aware of what he was doing, stopped, and looked up to see everyone staring at him.

“What the fuck are you looking at!” he said to the first person in sight, and then felt bad about it. Then he slouched some more in his desk, and looked at that angry blinking cursor, and pretended to type for a while by typing forwards and then backspacing over it. He killed a little more time by looking at the crime scene photo which showed a well-dressed man in his thirties, face down in a ditch, with three bullet holes – two in the chest and one in the head. No casings and the footprints had been swept. There was an asphalt road close enough for someone to have carried the body the short distance and then cleaned the scene and left. It would only have taken a few minutes.

Soon people started filing out of the office, and Jake took the folders back to the filing cabinet for storage, but he carefully pulled out the suspect’s journal and hid it in his jacket before he left.

That night Jake sat alone on the couch, thinking about what Sandy had said, and then pulled out the police report on Shane Johnson, age 19.
Jesus, he’s just a kid
, Jake thought.

Shane’s journal began:

I AM Shane, and this is the story of one hot summer, not too long ago, when I was young, and the world was laid out before me like an endlessly winding road.  It is the same story everywhere, no doubt, secretly hidden within all young people, of the dark journey from the shadows of our youth into the bright sunlight of our adult lives. The gang I hung out with, that I loved, and could never imagine not being with, is just like the one you hung out with, that you imagined would go on forever, but would melt away like morning clouds in the bright summer sky.

The hills were dry that summer, and wildfires flared up from time to time and sent smoke billowing into the skies. And we were burning inside; waves of fiery passion would burst up from time to time combusting two young people in a blaze that would transform them, phoenix-like, into a new, stronger form, or consume them; while for others, burning lust and desire smoldered deep within their secret hearts and dreams.

“Who the hell does this kid think he is - some kind of Hemmingway?” Jake said to himself.

Then he thought some more about the note that Sandy wrote him, but thought better of calling her, then changed his mind, but as he reached for the phone it rang.

“Hello?”

“Hi… Jake?”

“Sandy?”

“Yeah... um, just wanted to see... how you’re doing... if the case is going OK?”

“Oh – sure.”

“OK”

“Ok...”

There was a long pause while the two of them thought of the next move, much like chess players contemplating a complex position.

“I got your note.”

“Oh. I’m glad.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure... Jake, I have something I think you need.”

Shocked and excited, Jake was left speechless for a moment. “Uh, OK. Yeah.”

“I can only give it to you at your place.”

“Gee, Sandy... Um, OK”

“Are you busy now?”

“Uh, not really.”

“OK... can I come over now?”

“Oh, sorry. Yeah, sure.”

“OK, great! See you in a few minutes”

“OK, great. Bye.”

“Bye”

Jesus, what the hell was that?
Jake thought to himself. He knew that Sandy liked him, but, was this really gonna happen? Jake could feel the heat rising within himself, felt his arms perspiring, and a swelling between his loins. He looked around at the mess that was his house and quickly scooped up the dirty clothes that were laid on the floor, made neat stacks of some disheveled stacks of papers, and took the dishes that were in the sink and crammed them into the dishwasher. Then he rushed to the bathroom and quickly wiped down the counters and sink, and then caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.
What a fool I am,
he thought,
nothing like an old fool.
Then he paused, thinking for a few more moments, and decided to shave and brush his teeth. Just in case.

The doorbell rang and it was Sandy. She looked so much more relaxed in the white blouse and knee-length skirt that she wore now than that stupid pant suit she did at work. Jake always thought that those were so 1970. It was the eighties, why couldn’t Sandy wear something more up to date? “You look great with your work clothes off,” Jake blurted, and then realized what he’d said. “Sorry.”

“I know what you mean,” she replied, smiling.

“So... you want something? A soda? A vodka tonic?”

“No thanks,” Sandy said. “...well, maybe a glass of wine.”

Jake panicked for a minute while heading to the kitchen, but then realized that he probably had some cooking sherry up in a cupboard. He rinsed out an old glass, poured the sherry into it, and then had a swig of sherry himself for good measure. Ugh! It wasn’t very good, so he poured a little water in the glass, added a little vodka, and that seemed maybe better. He poured himself a Vodka tonic and brought the drinks back out to the living room. Sandy folded her long, smooth legs beneath her as she sat on the couch, and Jake couldn’t help notice her blouse that was halfway unbuttoned, showing off her beautiful cleavage, and a hint of a lace bra which complemented her smooth, white skin and her long, sensuous neck.

“Jake, I’m going to give you what you want, right now,” she said, reaching behind her.

Jesus,
Jake thought to himself, and reached towards Sandy, but she pulled out a thick paper journal and slapped it down on the table in front of him.

“There, how do you like that?” Sandy boasted.

“What the hell is this?”