1.
Ex-cop Sean Talmadge—retired five years now—wouldn’t let it go, and continued to harass me over a missing persons case he was convinced I was guilty of, going back seventeen years. When he was a homicide detective with the Hermosa Beach Police Department (northwest of Los Angeles), he followed me in his off hours and kept me under surveillance, albeit any evidence pointing toward the disappearance of my ex-lover, a friend of Talmadge’s daughter. He retired three years ago but continued to haunt and harass me; he was no longer with the police department and claimed he was a licensed private detective and working for a client to find out what happened to Nicole Rense—that’s the name of my ex-girlfriend. Talmadge’s “client” was himself; the man was obsessed with me in a most unhealthy manner.
I moved from Hermosa Beach to the mountain community called Idyllwild in Riverside County. My father owned a pre-fab trailer in the retirement community Pine Grove and when he passed, I inherited the place. I am not retirement age but the park allows those under fifty-five to live there if a property is from inheritance. Six months after I moved to the quiet, cozy Idyllwild community, Sean Talmadge, age 65, moved into a trailer on the other side of the golf course from where I lived. I tried complaining to property management and they said he purchased the lot and pre-fab with a solid bank loan and he had every right to live here; more, in fact, because he was a senior citizen and I, age 44, was not.
I would have moved to another state, or across the country to the east coast, but I did not have the finances. I lived off disability benefits, the pittance the government allotted me, for injuries in the first Gulf War. With a prosthetic right leg and right arm, I was not exactly employable in the real world. Even if I could move far away, Talmadge would most likely follow me. He followed me when I flew to Las Vegas once; have no idea how he found out I was there and what hotel I was staying at—but there he was, in the casino in Circus Circus. “Oh, hey, Steven Vance,” he said, acting surprised, “what a coincidence running into you.” Right. “So,” he said, patting me on the back, his breath smelling of vodka, “you here for some gambling or did you stash Nicki’s body somewhere in Vegas? Lots of unsolved murders here in Vegas, eh?”
He was a heavy drinker. When he was still a cop, I filed several harassment complaints with the Hermosa Police Department. I had one interview with some lady from Internal Affairs; I suggested his drinking problem had made him delusional and obsessed. Talmadge did not stop bothering me; I knew his friends in the department simply looked the other way, and Talmadge most likely convinced them I was responsible for whatever happened to Nicole Rense.
2.
I met Nicole a year before I joined the Marines and was shipped to Kuwait in 1991. She was 20, second year of college, and I was 22. We had a rollercoaster relationship: one week madly in love, the other vehemently fighting. The passion made for some memorable times in the bedroom. She was angry and upset that I had joined the Corp. “Why do you want to be a stupid jarhead?” she asked me with confusion. “You’re gonna get killed over there,” she said with concern. “Don’t expect me to wait for you,” she said with spite.
I told Talmadge many times: “She broke up with me. She said she met some guy and was taking off to Vegas with him.”
“So who is this ‘guy’?” he would ask.
“I have no idea.”
“Because he doesn’t exist.”
“She could have been lying.”
“He’s a fabrication of your imagination. What did you do to Nicki?”
“Nothing.”
“Where is her body?”
“I have no idea.”
“We’re going to find out the truth eventually.”
“When you do, let me know.”
I was free of him when I went to the Middle East; there, I lost an arm and a leg from a landmine that the HumVee I was in drove over. Two men in my platoon died. For a long time I wished I had gone with them. I had to come home a crippled “hero.” I did nothing heroic in Kuwait and Iraq. No one did.
3.
My handicapped status did not deter Talmadge from continuing his harassment, surveillance, and constant questioning and badgering. He was convinced I had something to do with Nicole’s vanishing because his daughter, Lisa, told him so; she said Nicole was afraid of me, that I had physically hurt her.
“Something you must understand about Nicole,” I said one time, when he brought me into the station and put me in an interview room, “she was into the rough stuff. She was into BDSM. She was kinky.”
The look on his face was priceless: the shock, the disgust. “You’re making that up,” he said, making a fist; I knew he wanted to punch me in the mouth.
He refused to believe the truth about a young woman who had been friends with his daughter since they were both nine. I should have told him some dark nastiness I knew about Lisa, things Nicole had told me…
4.
I could feel his eyes whenever I took to the golf course. When I went to the community pool and relaxed in the Jacuzzi, he would show up and swim laps. He always kept his distance, never engaged conversation. I didn’t know what he thought he’d find; perhaps he expected me to fall apart, drop to my knees and confess my crime because the weight of guilt was too heavy on my heart and I needed forgiveness.
When I drove into town for groceries and a liquor store run, or to have a burger and beer at the local grill, he would follow me in his beat up flatbed truck, do his shopping at the same time, or having a steak and vodka tonic at the local grill.
One day I decided enough, it was time to confront him.
5.
I drove east, on the highway, and headed down the mountain for the desert. I looked in the rearview: he kept his distance, but his truck was there, pacing. I pressed on the pedal and lost him for a while; I slowed down and let him catch up. I speeded; slowed down, let him come back. I toyed with him for three hours, wondering if he had enough gas for this, if he kept a full tank like I did.
I drove through Palm Springs, then to Indio, and headed southeast toward the Salton Sea. It was four in the afternoon and the sun was blazing hot. The car thermometer read 113. I had AC. Did Talmadge? Was he sweating it up in that old truck?
We were the only vehicles for miles in both directions, in the middle of the desert, the rancid smell of the Salton Sea muggy and thick. I was looking for a certain mile marker. When I passed it, I drove two hundred feet and stopped. This was the place I wanted.
This was the exact place I had planned.
I got out of my car and he got out of his truck. His skin was bright pink and his body covered in sweat. He approached me quickly, stomping his feet on the scorching hot pavement. He had a revolver in his hand, a .38 Smith and Wesson. He pointed the weapon at my chest, hand shaking. I worried he would accidentally pull the trigger.
“Did you hide her body somewhere around here?” he demanded. “Is that why you stopped?”
“I stopped because you’ve been following me, Talmadge. Why won’t you let this go?”
“I loved her,” he said like a croak, and then he began to cry. The heat and stress was too much for him. “God help me, I loved that sweet beautiful girl.”
So that was it. I remember Nicole telling me about an older man who was obsessed with her, in love with her. She never said who it was. “It’s really kinda sad,” she’d said.
“Something you should know,” I said slowly, “I had a threesome with Nicole and Lisa. That’s right: I made love to your daughter. Once. Just once, with Nicki there.”
That was a lie but I knew it would strike him deep. I should have told him this before. His face paled. “You…” He couldn’t speak. His eyes bulged. “No,” he moaned. He dropped the gun and fell to his knees, grabbing at his chest, trying to breathe.
I moved toward him. “Something the matter, old man?”
“My…in my…cab,” he wheezed. “Pills. My…nitro…please…”
I walked to his truck. I took my time, hobbling on my prosthetic leg. I opened the cab door and spotted a pillbox on the passenger seat. I opened it. There were eight sections for vitamins and medicine: iron and calcium, Vicodin and nitro.
Talmadge was lying on the ground. I stood over him, holding the pillbox over his head. He reached up and pleaded, “Pill…please…”
“First I want to tell you something,” I said. “I’m going to give you the confession you’ve been waiting seventeen years for. Yeah, I buried Nicole near here. Sweet little beautiful Nicki.” I gestured. “About half a mile out there, middle of the desert. You’ve been right all along, Sean. You can die knowing that, and knowing you won’t be able to do a thing about it.”
He began to violently shake. He wanted to get up. He wanted his gun. His heart would not cooperate with his desire for justice.
I picked up the .38.
“I should show you mercy. Instead, I am going to stand here and watch you slowly die. For the seventeen years of hell you gave me. I lost two limbs for this country and what do I come back to? You. Was Nicole there for me? She said she loved me, she said we were soul mates, until I joined the Marines. She broke up with me; said she met some guy at a party and was going to Vegas with him for the weekend. I’m sure it was a lie to hurt me, to show me she was serious about letting me go. She came to my apartment to tell me that. I was hammering some nails into the wall to put up a painting and I used that hammer, slammed it into her head. I crushed her skull. I put her body in the trunk of my car; it was easy, she was petite and skinny, as you know. I drove out here, I knew the desert, I knew I could bury her out here and no one would ever find her. And that’s what I did. Her bones are out there, buried. I could go out there and dig her up, you know. I left a large rock on her grave, in case I ever needed to move her body.”
By the time I was done talking, he was dead.
I leaned down. “Goodbye, Detective Talmadge.”
I left him there. I got into my car, taking his gun, and drove back to Idyllwild.
6.
A trucker came across his body and called the highway patrol. I saw a news item on TV and word around the retirement community was that Mr. Talmadge had died of a heart attack out by the Salton Sea. There was an obituary in the local weekly.
I thought I was free now; I could live my uneventful life in peace. The first visit I received was three weeks later, by his daughter Lisa. I had met her a few times when I dated Nicole. The years had not been kind to her; the sprite teenage girl in my memory was now a tired, plump real estate agent and mother of three, two husbands behind her.
“Hello, Steven,” she said.
I acted like I didn’t know her.
“It’s me, Lisa Talmadge. Well, Harrison. That was my second married name. I was Talmadge.”
“Oh yes. Lisa. How are you doing?” I pretended “how strange this is.”
She gestured behind her. “I’m collecting my father’s belongings. He passed away…did you know that?”
She was playing me. I replied, “Yes, I heard. My condolences.”
She stood there, waiting for me to invite her in, the civil thing to do. So I did. She walked past me and looked around, taking inventory of my Spartan existence. She saw the extra prosthetic limbs leaning against a bookcase. “So you were injured in the war,” she said.
“Yeah. Some war.”
“It must have been painful.” Her voice was cold.
“Can I get you something? Soda, water, soda water? A beer?”
She turned and glared. “Let’s cut the bogus nicey-nice, Steven.”
“Let’s.”
“I know why my father moved out here.”
“To stalk me.”
“Not stalk. Investigate.”
“Your dad was a sick man. Senile, delusional. You must know this.”
“What I know,” she said, “is that you did something to Nicki. My best friend. I knew about your violence.”
“And hers? You must have known she was…”
“I knew what she liked.” She was uncomfortable saying that, her face going red. “I know she went to see you, to dump you in person. She thought you deserved that much, no Dear John letter or a phone call.”
“She never came to my apartment to tell me anything,” I said calmly. “She broke up with me on the phone. I told your dad this—hundreds of times.”
“I talked to her the night before. I didn’t hear from her again. No one did, not her folks, other friends. No one.”
“She took off with some guy.”
“Yeah, she said she met a new guy but she didn’t go anywhere with him.”
I felt a tinge of pain—so the other guy was true.
“My dad talked to that guy and the guy said she never showed up for the Vegas trip.”
That bitch…that cheating bitch…
“What happened to my dad?” she asked sharply.
“He had a heart attack.”
“My dad checked in every day on what he was doing. ‘Just in case’ he always said. He was determined to find out the truth and put you away.”
“Like I said, he was a disturbed man with an obsession.”
Should I tell her what her father confessed, that he “loved” Nicole in a way a man should not love his daughter’s friend? I could say maybe he killed Nicole and was trying to pin the old crime on an innocent man…
“He called from his cell phone and said he was following your car,” Lisa said. “The same day he was found in the middle of nowhere, rotting in the hot sun.”
“Lisa, I’m sorry, but that is not true. I have not been out of this trailer in three months, other than to go into town for groceries.”
If anyone in this park saw me drive out of town, saw Talmadge follow me in his truck, noticed that I came home late, my alibi would shatter. This was a community of tired old people, however, who were lost in the past or preoccupied with their favorite TV shows.
“He was on to you and you knew it.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” I told her.
I held the door open. She walked out. The tension off her body was like a wave of knives.
“Your day will come, Steven,” she said.
I sighed and feigned weariness. “Again, my condolences about your father. He may have been mentally ill, but deep down he was a good man.”
“The hell with you,” she said, walking away fast, back to her father’s trailer, back to picking up what was left of his life.
7.
I had committed no crime, unless withholding medication from a heart attack victim was a crime. No one could prove that; there were no witnesses on that empty stretch of road. I did steal his registered handgun, and that could be construed a criminal act. That night, after Lisa’s visit, I dismantled the handgun and drove back to the desert, burying the pieces every five miles.
I kept one bullet as a trophy, like I had kept Nicole’s hair clip.
Hindsight: perhaps I should have broke into Talmadge’s trailer; he most likely had a file on me, surveillance photos, notes on his theories. Then again, if I had removed anything like that and his daughter knew about it, suspicion would fall on me.
I was surprised that Nicole’s remains had not been found by now. I had waited for it all these years, for the warrant and handcuffs, if her bones could even be identified. The crushed skull would indicate murder. Maybe one day she would be found, and I would be long gone from this earth.
I simply wanted to live the rest of my days in peace.
8.
Five months went by. I expected another visit from Lisa. Her father’s trailer went up for sale and was purchased by a couple from Canada. They were nice people and I chatted with them by the pool a few times. They had always dreamed of retiring to nether regions of California.
Five months, and then I was paid a visit by a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s detective named Harold Kent. He gave me his card, showed me his badge and ID. He asked if he could come in and talk to me. I said certainly. “How can I help you, Detective Kent?”
“May I sit down? It’s pretty damn hot out.”
“I have AC,” I said. I reached for the control on the wall and turned on the cold air. “Can I get you anything? Water, soda, soda water? Beer?”
“If you have some cold water,” he said, sitting at the card table in the living room area. An antique manual typewriter was on the card table; one day I would write a memoir about the Gulf War and Nicole.
I got us both small bottles of water from the fridge. I sat across from him.
“Thank you,” he said, gulping the water down. He was a heavy-set man in his mid-50s, probably more used to deskwork than the field. I looked at his card: he was in the economic crimes division. Deskwork, tracking down embezzlers and bad checks.
“You were a Jarine in Gulf One,” he said. “I was there, manning radar at CentCom in Saudi Arabia.”
“Army?”
“Reserves.”
“Would you like another water?”
“Eh? I’m fine, thanks. Let me get to it, Mr…”
“Call me Steve.”
“It’s about Sean Talmadge. You know who he is—was.”
“Yes, he lived across the golf course.”
“Sean and I were good friends; we were partners in a patrol car twenty-five years ago. He trained me, had seven years seniority. He made detective before me, the smart bastard. He wanted homicide; I wanted white-collar kicks. I knew he was keeping an eye on you, convinced you had something to do with a girl’s disappearance. His daughter calls me, she says you had something to do with her father’s death.”
“He had a heart attack is what I heard.”
“Yes, a massive coronary. It was bound to happen, he didn’t take care of himself.”
“She came to see me and made accusations,” I said. “I did not cause her father’s heart attack.”
“She’s upset. She also thinks you are responsible for her missing friend.”
“Is that why you’re here? Are you investigating me now?”
He held out his hands. “Not my jurisdiction. And I’m not homicide. I’m just here to get Lisa off my back. You must understand, she won’t stop bugging me unless I came out here and had a talk with you.”
“I understand,” I said.
“I’m sure she’ll come to her senses, that her dad died naturally and these things happen.”
“I feel for her loss.”
“Hopefully she’ll be satisfied when I tell her my opinion is: you’re a wounded vet living quietly out here.”
“That’s me.”
He stood up. “Thank you for your understanding.”
“Anytime.”
We shook hands.
I didn’t believe him. Never trust a cop.
I watched him from the window. He was taking a good look at my plot, my car. He looked back at my trailer.
9.
I was on my guard. After six weeks, I again thought this mess was done with. Never underestimate the determined. Lisa Harrison neé Talmadge broke into my trailer, a gun in her hand. She wasn’t stealth about it; I heard the sound of glass breaking, my side door opening. I grabbed the baseball bat I kept by the bed and rushed to the living room. Lisa turned on the light and smiled at the sight of me, holding the bat, she holding the gun: a .9mm Glock. She probably found it with her father’s belongings when she came by to pick up his stuff.
“I know how to use a gun,” she said, “Daddy taught me.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” I asked, wondering if I should rush her, if she had it in her to shoot.
“Drop the bat, you murderer.”
I saw in her eyes intent. Yeah, she would shoot me; it had taken her months to get up the nerve to come here.
I put the bat down. “Take it easy, we can talk about this…”
“Oh yes, we will talk.”
“I know you are upset about your father…”
“I have been upset nearly two decades about my friend. My best friend. That you took away from me. What did you do with her?”
“Lisa, look,” I said, stepping forward.
“One more step and you’re dead.”
“All right then, you want me to say it? I killed her. I killed Nicole. I didn’t plan to; it just happened; I lost my control. She broke up with me and I had a hammer and I used it.” How strange it felt, a relief: to say it out loud, to tell someone my darkest secret, like I had told her father out by the Salton Sea.
She wasn’t expecting my confession. “Just like Daddy said.”
“That’s right, Lisa. Sean Talmadge was correct all along. But did you know your father was in love with Nicole? Your best friend? That he wanted—”
“Shut up with your lies!”
She stumbled. Was she drunk? Her father was a drinker; I remember Nicole mentioning that Lisa liked her wine a little too much.
“What did you do with her body?”
“She’s out in the desert.” I had an idea. I said, “I can take you to her.”
“What?”
“I can take you to her grave, and you can vindicate your dad. You’ll be the hero. I want to turn myself in and confess,” I lied to her. “I want to pay for what I did. Your dad will be a hero, so will you. It is time for me to do this.”
“Okay,” she said. “Is it far?”
“Not far,” I lied again.
“I’ll shoot you, I really will, if you try any monkey business.”
“We’ll just need a flashlight and a shovel, okay? Don’t get nervous.”
She followed me as I got a flashlight from the kitchen and a shovel from the back of the trailer. I could smell booze on her breath.
“We can take my car,” I said.
“Wait, I don’t know,” she said, “let’s wait until morning when the sun—”
She stumbled on one of her feet. Drunk. I swung the shovel around, hitting her on the side of the head. She dropped the gun and looked at me with surprised terror. I swung the shovel again.
10.
I took Lisa out to the desert to be with her friend. I could not find the exact spot in the dark. It was close enough. The sun was just coming up when I finished digging a hole. I dumped Lisa into the hole and covered her up.
I stopped for breakfast driving back to Idyllwild. I would have to pack some things, go somewhere else, another state. Or I could just stay put and play dumb. I would need to wipe the trailer down for prints, fix the broken glass on the side door; look for her car in the retirement park, or outside it, wherever she left it. I didn’t know what she drove; I would need to keep an eye on a parked car in the same spot over the next week. This could be done, this will work…
11.
“Don’t join the Marines,” Nicole had said. “Stay here with me, or go and never have me. Your choice.”
12.
Choices, I thought when I arrived home, to find several Riverside Sheriff vehicles and one unmarked car parked around my trailer.
Harold Kent was there, sporting a glib smile. The sheriff deputy handed me a warrant, giving them carte blanche to search my trailer, which they had already done when I was gone.
Kent held in his hand what they were seeking: a cell phone. Another deputy had two items bagged: Nicole’s hair clip, Talmadge’s bullet: my momentos.
Lisa had left her phone on when we had our exchange, placed on the card table by the typewriter and I had not noticed; everything I said was on Kent’s voice mail at the LAPD.
My lawyer is working on getting the recording tossed out: it was obtained by a citizen, there was no warrant for such, and a recording in possession of the LAPD was out of jurisdiction—they did not know where Nicole was murdered, she vanished from Hermosa Beach, and they had no body—for a cold case crime and the case of the now missing Lisa Harrison. Search parties were sent into the desert, but the desert was too vast, no graves, body or bones turned up.
Nevertheless, I have decided to confess. It is time. I will give my allocution to the court: my crime seventeen years ago, what really happened with Sean Talmadge, where I buried both Nicole and Lisa…
13.
Or maybe not.
The judge has excluded the voice mail as unlawfully obtained evidence. Without it, my lawyer says, they cannot hold me. The lawyer is filing a motion to have charges dropped. I will be back home soon, in Idyllwild.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Hemmingson (July 12, 1966 – January 9, 2014) was a novelist, short story writer, literary critic, cultural anthropologist, qualitative researcher, playwright, music critic and screenwriter. He died in Tijuana, Mexico on 9 January 2014. The reported cause was cardiac arrest. This was one of his last stories.