6

 

 

Jessie Maris switched television stations at just the wrong time.

Her husband Nolan had warned her to stay in the trailer all day while he and his friends worked on their mysterious, week-long project in the new aluminum barn, an order that restricted her entertainment to television or a book. And since books had to be read, visualized, and comprehended, while television did all of those things for you—including music to poke the right emotions—Jessie kicked her feet up on the couch and hit the TV remote. She watched a Phoenix shopping station until the jewelry turned artsy and boring.

That’s when she changed channels and saw US Congressman Randall King on the news, the bastard standing there in person, his mean red face on the screen with a pretty blond news reporter. First, he complained about the unreasonable cost of health care in Arizona, then acknowledged the reporter’s question, King saying, yes, the outgoing Arizona Governor had called him personally, told King he would have the Governor’s backing to be the party’s next gubernatorial nominee.

Representative sicko, Arizona’s next governor? Her heartrate and blood pressure spiked, Jessie recognizing the flush, the throbbing in her arteries. Her hands clenched into fists. That crude, creepy bastard as governor of Arizona? The worst family-court judge in the state gets himself elected mayor, a congressman, and now could become the state’s top politician?

Imagine the corruption and vile power he’d have then over families and children.

Her eyes watered, blurring her vision.

She pictured King on his bench two decades earlier, the judge sneering down from on high, staring at, but not seeing, most of the people in his courtroom. While ignoring the hurt, hungry, and sick people needing help, he focused his gooey eyes on thirteen-year-old Jessie. He hadn’t cared about Jessie’s mother’s abuse. He hadn’t cared about all the testimony, which collectively became an obvious truth. What he cared about was his bribe.

She clicked off the television and wept. She plopped on the old, tattered couch, looked around the trailer she and Nolan lived in, and cried until her shoulders heaved. Her fists wanted to pound and kill that bastard King, but she could only cry.

The judge had crushed her as a child, turned the rest of her life into hell, spoiled any chance she ever had for happiness. That’s what her gut told her. King was such a horrible person. He was a monster who should be locked in prison, not running the state.

Didn’t she need to expose him? Wasn’t she obliged to tell the world everything he’d done? Sharp teeth bit her stomach from the inside, like that alien demon in the movies, eating its way out. Jessie couldn’t stay silent.

She wiped her wet cheeks and hiked to the nearly barren hill fifty yards north of the trailer, the highest spot on Nolan’s desert property, and the only place you could acquire a signal for cell phone service. Nolan normally called his friends on the CB radio in his truck.

From the top of the hill, she called her sister, Angie.

“Hi Jessie.”

“Did you see the news?”

“What news?”

“Congressman King. I just saw him on television. He’s going to be the next governor of Arizona.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes, Angie. You’ve got to help me do something. Sue him. Get the feds to press charges. It has to come out what he did.”

She recognized Angie’s silence. She’d listened to her sister’s disapproval all her life. Jessie was always the bad sister, never doing homework, a smartass in class, smoking cigs and blunts, screwing Tommy in the high school parking lot. The world treated her like a piece of trash because she hadn’t cared about or finished high school. She had a lot more fun running off with a twenty-something biker.

“We’ve been over this so many times,” Angie said.

“You’re going to let Randall King become governor?”

“Oh, come on, Jessie, you can’t be serious. It’s been twenty years.”

“You know they’re still doing that kind of thing. He has to be exposed.”

Angie grabbed a loud breath to show Jessie she wasn’t happy. Her older sister was always the drama queen. Spent hours before school washing and setting her hair. A freaking Homecoming Princess.

“Remember what happened when we tried to expose Judge King back then—when it happened,” Angie said. “Remember that poor lawyer.”

“Ah, that punk attorney chickened out.”

“I was sixteen and did the best I could, Jessie. My whole savings account to hire that poor man. He didn’t chicken out. He wasn’t afraid of Randall King when he should have been. You know they killed him.”

“Maybe. Or he got scared and ran.”

“You know King’s people killed him, and you know it could happen to us.”

“Not if we had the right help,” Jessie said. “Some famous attorney. You know, like that Gloria whatever.”

“You need to stop being a victim. Honest to God. It’s two decades. Are you still seeing the shrink? I keep getting the bills.”

“I am. Yes. She’s helping. And you know I appreciate everything you do for me. But we can’t let this happen. We can’t. You have to help me stop him.”

“You’re still doing downers?”

Jessie’s back teeth pressed together. “Screw you. Drugs have nothing to do with this phone call, my asking for help. You know what that man did.”

“Yes, and I also know what he could do now, not only to me, but to my husband and family, if I came out in support of your accusations. Maybe he doesn’t kill us, maybe he makes a phone call, pulls the unions off my husband’s construction projects.”

“I need you, Angie. Please? No one will ever believe me if you don’t back me up.”

“I’ll take you to rehab, little sister, a place where you can—”

Jessie hung up and looked for Nolan’s stash.

 

 

Before she swallowed two 100-milligram reds, Jessie pulled out her yellow, wire-ringed notebook and filled in another entry in her so-called drug diary. That’s what the shrink called it, the woman psychologist she’d been seeing. Her job with the diary was to keep track of her drug use—write down the date, the time of day, the drug she was about to use, how much, and what she’d been thinking about or feeling before deciding to use. The first few entries didn’t do much, but after looking at a month’s worth…wow, talk about an eye-opener. She dropped the reds back in Nolan’s bottle.

Her diary’s recent entries all talked about her lousy life, how Nolan hurt her, and how depressing everything was in a desert trailer. Nolan, lousy, and depressing being the most repeated words, which was probably what the shrink wanted the diary to do, focus Jessie on specific reasons for her drug use.

Sickening, really. It made her body physically hurt to keep writing down the same bad feelings on paper every day, looking at them, staring even, Jessie getting more upset and more depressed the more entries she made. It was so easy to see why she kept burying her feelings with chemistry.

Right that second, she wanted to quit drugs and make stopping Congressman King her new focus in life. Her sister and the world were hiding from the truth, so the revelation was up to her. Why not? What did she have to lose, her whole existence these days being crap? Nolan treating her the way he did, Jessie accepting his treatment.

She skipped the downers to concentrate on what she’d say if she worked up the courage to ask Nolan for help with King. What words could she use?

 

 

Twenty minutes later, Jessie chugged a second can of beer and carried her third outside, against Nolan’s orders. She hoped the fresh air and brewski would relax her enough to stop the strange sensations she was experiencing. Her hands trembled non-stop, and a swamp of perspiration drenched her short brown hair. Breathing had become strenuous. A desperate need to escape that stinking trailer had overcome her fear of Nolan.

The news on TV earlier had made her physically sick. That bastard King becoming a congressman six years ago had sent Jessie to bed for a week, but imagining him as Governor turned the trailer’s air unclean and confining. She had to shift outside, under the sky. Where the afternoon heaven burned like a blue fire.

Gosh, it was hot. One-nineteen in the shade. She gulped her beer. This one tasted better than the first two, and the Sonora Desert’s hot wind at least dried some of the sweat from her skin. She’d worn a T-shirt and cut-off jeans to take advantage, and she breathed easier than before. The trailer reeked of beer, pizza, and dirty clothes. Too bad Nolan didn’t have room in his new barn for a full-size washer and dryer.

Male laughter escaped Nolan’s self-constructed aluminum box. He’d called the project a workshed when trucks had delivered the unassembled kit last month, a mini-warehouse during construction, then his “barn and private castle” once finished. He’d forbidden her to go inside.

Clearly, her husband and his biker buds were up to something. Except for a couple of food runs, Nolan and friends had been working in there non-stop for over a week. Odd, they wouldn’t call takeout. And then today, when Nolan had sent her to town at lunchtime, she’d come home to another black Chevy truck parked on the property. More people, including maybe a hostage or a body, because Jessie had noticed a trail in the dirt from the new truck to the barn. They had dragged someone inside.

What was Nolan doing in there?

She sighed, her curiosity making her want to peek. And she had to tell Nolan about that bastard judge, give her husband the news and ask for his help. She sipped her beer. Nolan and the guys had to be hungry. Maybe she…

The Budweiser must be making her stupid. Sure as the sun rose every day, Nolan would kick her ass if she knocked on that door. Easier, she could call out, get a big delivery of pizza, and some of those chicken salads the pizza place had been pushing on their local TV ads. She could accept the food at the trailer, then walk everything back to the barn. Maybe the sight and smell of food would keep Nolan from beating her.

Worse than risky. Improbable. But Nolan knew something of Jessie’s experience with the judge and her mother. She was dying to tell him the news. She needed to get these feelings off her chest, not only about King, but her own sister and Angie’s denial of support. That’s probably what the trembling was about, the sweating. The beer and fresh air had helped, but her skin still sizzled. Something was wrong with her.

If Angie wouldn’t help, she needed her husband to back her up. Nolan had money since his uncle died. He could afford to hire her a top-notch attorney, someone who could help prepare a damning statement, maybe set up a TV press conference. Her revelations about a gubernatorial candidate could send him to prison.

Maybe what she could do, knock and ask Nolan quick what kind of pizza to pick up for dinner, did they want any chicken? Maybe did they need more beer. See if he had time to talk about King. At least she’d get a peek inside.

Do it.

She teared up as soon as she’d knocked. The sound echoed through her, a bell ringing wrong, wrong, wrong. The dumbest idea she’d ever had. Ever, ever, ever. Nolan was going to beat the shit out of her.

The aluminum door snapped open. Behind Nolan’s tall frame, three other men worked on attaching some kind of big machine to a flatbed trailer. Nolan had rented one of those four-wheeled BobCats the other day, and now she saw why. Beside the trailer, the forklift helped the men reposition the odd-looking device.

Nolan hopped forward and smashed her shoulders with both hands, open-handed punches which knocked her backward, staggering like a drunk. Her spirits lost balance as well as her body. Physical attack was hatred in its purest, most simple form. How could my mate despise and hurt me? Her soul begged for answer.

She stumbled but didn’t fall. Her shoulders and upper arms went numb. The contorted features on his face said he might kill her.

“What are you doing?” Nolan said. “I told you to stay in the trailer.”

She pulled farther away, fighting to compose herself. The blows had shocked and frightened her. Adrenaline roared. “I thought you and your friends might be hungry. I was going to drive for pizza, get one or two of the chicken salads they’ve—”

“Are you crazy?” He followed her, moving outside and closing the door behind him. “Did you see anything now when I opened that door?”

“No. I was looking at you.”

He pushed her again. “What didn’t you understand about staying in the trailer?”

She lurched backward and burst out crying. Tears paraded on her cheeks, gathering momentum on the way down. Her nose ran, and her skin itched. She hadn’t responded like this to abuse since she was a child. As she’d learned from her mother, crying only made the abuser’s anger worse. But she couldn’t help whatever went on inside her. Not anymore. Her distress was mushrooming. Exploding.

“Something happened.” She smothered a sob. “I needed to tell—”

“You’re crying? What’s the matter with you? You sick?”

She teetered. Her shoulders were tender from his blows and a fiery bubble in her gut pressed against her heart. Her ability to control herself was…disappearing. “Please listen,” she said. “That old bastard Judge King is going to be the next Arizona Governor. Oh, I can’t even breathe.”

“You need to leave me alone,” he said. “I asked you nice.”

“Please, Nolan. I told you about Randall King, the judge who—”

“Your mother was nuts, Jessie. It wasn’t the creepy judge’s fault. It wasn’t your fault. But you need to leave me alone. Get out of here before I lose my temper.”

“I’m going to explode. Please help me!”

Nolan stepped into the punch, using his two hundred pounds to drive his fist deep into her stomach, doubling her over, dropping Jessie to her knees on the dirt. The pain in her gut wasn’t as bad as the shocking loss of breath. Her lungs didn’t work. They wouldn’t suck any air.

She toppled onto her ribs and rolled onto her back. She still couldn’t breathe.

“Get back in the trailer,” Nolan said. “Watch TV or read one of your stupid books. You come back, disturb me again, you’ll be at the dentist all winter. You hear me?”

He stared down at her, maybe wondering why she didn’t answer. Maybe not. But he finally understood she’d had the wind knocked out of her. He took hold of her cutoffs at the waist, his knuckles pressing into her abdomen. When he lifted, filling her lungs with fresh, delicious air again, she gasped with relief.

Nolan let her fall back to the dirt. “Stay in the trailer.”